String Theory
by manic-intent
Summary: AWE Spoilers. Sparrington. James wakes up in the Locker, and Jack finds he might have lost his Pearl in a far more disconcerting fashion. Fixed line breaks.
1. Thieves and Scoundrels

[A/N: I just read Michael Straczynski's Midnight Nation, and there was a lot in the graphic novel that I thought was relevant to the concept of Davy Jones' Locker. I'm not really sure I'll like to do some sort of resurrection fiction, so we'll see how this one goes. : ) The title 'String Theory' is from NBC's Heroes.

FF net edit: for some annoying reason the line breaks didn't work. Here's the reuploads.

String Theory

1

Thieves and scoundrels

_Do ye fear death?_

James Norrington frowns, squeezes his eyes shut, and rubs his temples with the pads of his thumbs. The wet, oddly accented voice fades, but the scratchy feeling at the back of his mind doesn't. If he listens, he knows he will hear _wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG_ spoken in modulations of anger and tones of despair, and it is not quite a normal thing for a ten year old to hear. He wonders if he is going quite mad.

He tells himself that he is probably just tired. This is his first long voyage, heading all the way from Southampton to Bombay, and he is excited and frightened at the same time. The world seems far larger and more mysterious than he had thought, and at night, at the prow, listening to sailor-talk and wishing he could understand what they were saying, the sea endless and beautiful in a dark blanket around him, he _knew_. There is nothing to be afraid of; this endless blue is where he _belongs_.

James knows his brother thinks him quite strange, though his mother merely smiles, seeing the normally proper, quiet child shadow the footsteps of the young Navy Lieutenant in charge of the merchant marine ship and pepper anyone who would listen with questions. _That_ scene feels right, and _this_, the clear azure sky and the faint arcs of seabird-white that scythe lazily about in infinite circles above them, but if he allows himself to think, he would feel an uncomfortable sense of familiarity. As though he has known this. As though he has seen this.

But that is quite impossible. He says it out loud for his own benefit, quietly. "Impossible."

"What is, child?" His mother's soft, gentle voice, behind him. James turns from where he has crossed his arms with some difficulty on the rail: due to his height, it does not look quite as dashing as he would have hoped. And he blinks, startled, a cold coil of horror under his breast.

He _knows_ his mother is smiling, _knows_ those green eyes, like his own, should be crinkled at the edges with laugh lines, but her face is blurred, like a smudge over a sketch, gray and unformed and flat, and James flattens back against the rail with a sharp gasp.

His mother merely laughs. "Did I startle you?"

James rubs his eyes, hard, and has to force himself to blink them open, his fingers curled tight into his palms. He is overwhelmingly relieved to see his mother's face leap back into focus, every freckle on her cheek present, even the lithe curls of sandy brown teased into escape by the unruly breeze under her sensible hat. James bites back a low, choked sound, and forces himself to smile. "No, no mother. You did not."

"It is not unmanly to admit fear," his mother says playfully, reaching forward to ruffle his hair. "Rather, it is part of being human."

James nods, solemnly, though he feels ashamed. "I think I am tired still. I am not used to the sea."

"Well, that is understandable," his mother looks over the rail herself, soft hands folded demurely, one palm over the other, glancing down at the froth as the keel cut through the waves. "You father is none too fond of the sea, nor is your brother."

"I did not say I was not fond of her," James says quickly, with a child's impulsiveness. "I feel I could love the sea."

"A seaman's life is the saddest of all, I feel," his mother's gaze is fixed on the waves. "One would love the sea first before any woman, or child, and the sea, she is a cruel and possessive mistress. In time one may have children, but never _have_ children."

"I do not understand, mother," James blinks, though he remembers; his grandfather was a marine. And again, there is that scratchy feeling in the back of his mind: wrong, wrong, _wrong_. He rubs his eyes again, feels tears pricking under his knuckles, until the feeling goes away.

His mother looks up at the birds. "Having children is not the same as loving them in sufficiency, James. But you are young yet to understand the ways of the heart. And it is a long way to Bombay, where you can learn to love the sea." Her smile is indulgent, unjudging, and James forgets the nagging doubt that her words cause him.

--

William Turner, Captain of the _Flying Dutchman_, Guide of Souls lost at sea, felt a little foolish sitting on the jagged rail of his submersible ship and talking to effectively nothing. The hour just before sundown in the Locker tended to be quiet, jobwise, though there were already poor souls shuffling about his ship, gray and lost and neither seeing him nor each other. Pale ghosts dressed variably in white shifts, or in the clothes they had worn before their deaths; cravats and greatcoats, frocks and tattered breeches. His father stood at the wheel, watching him, then finally wandered over, clearing his throat with a little raspy noise that Will had taken to understand meant Bootstrap had something he wanted to tell him but wasn't quite sure how he'll take it.

"Let's hear it," he said as kindly as he could, his fingers in his lap and staring at the water. "I've been trying to call her for half an… an… I mean, probably an hour, and there's nothing."

It had been at least several months, topside at least, of captaining a ship with only his father for company, and Bootstrap still seemed too deferential. It was uncomfortable, given that the man _was_ his father; but Will understood why. Bootstrap was afraid of losing his son, in any manner or form, however illogical that sentiment may be.

"Calypso isn't here, Will. She's Up there."

"This is still sea, though," Will said stubbornly, waving a hand out at the trackless water. Still an hour, then it would fill with souls lost too deep or long at sea to have enough of their essence to float above the waves. He didn't quite understand the mechanics of floating-on-boat as compared to eerie-underwater-ghost, but he did not quite want to.

"And 'tis very kindly of you, fer sure, t'want t'free all the men caught deep in the Locker, but as I've said, yer predecessor be the architect, not the minder; he don't give nothin' up, so he didn't bother makin' up a way fer himself t'rescue one o' his prisoners. Ye'll need…"

"Supernatural outside aid, preferably of the crab kind, I know," Will agreed patiently. He missed Elizabeth's fire. Disagreeing with Bootstrap sometimes felt akin to putting a boot to a puppy. No small wonder that the navigator had once been the necessary third of an unlikely set of friends. "Hence Calypso."

"She ain't the only sea spirit o' power 'bout the worlds, Will," Bootstrap looked over the side with him. "An' Underside be where magic flows, when it's comin' out of the world above. Sure ye can call someone else. Or somethin'. Calypso be one o' the most powerful, 'tis all. But a lesser spirit would do fer what ye intend. Might even be better for the poor bugger's sanity. Calypso thinks in lines no mortal tends to. The lesser spirits are more subtle."

"Flows? Coming out?" Will turned to stare at Bootstrap, trying to grasp more than one concept at a time and failing.

Bootstrap shrugged. "I heard the old Cap'n mutterin' about it the night after he had t'kill the Kraken. Magic's slowly ebbin' away, from the world above, into this one, by choice, sometimes, but mostly be man's work. There's a little less o' the mystery in the world above, bit by bit, each time somethin' like the Kraken is lost. Soon there'll be nothin' o' magic left topside."

"What happens when it's all gone?" Will asked, fascinated to the point of forgetting why he had stopped the ship here in the first place.

"S'pose the world above will be a real borin' place," Bootstrap smiled without humor. When Will frowned, disappointed by the vagueness of the curious tidbit, he added, with a dry chuckle, "Don't know, Will. I'm just an old pirate with an ear t'the ground. But I've seen the old Cap'n summon spirits up from here before, t'speak to. Didn't seem that hard. Ye just call them by their names. Don't even have t'be a true name."

"I don't know any spirits," Will said, still trying to be patient but now feeling a little nettled. "I'm still really new to all this."

"For anyone livin' in any side o' the worlds t'want to live in the other side, there has t'be a price," Bootstrap said, as though he hadn't heard, looking down at the waves. Still clear, but only for three quarters of an hour more. "Ye pay it twofold: one t'passage, an' one fer havin' to live in a way ye ain't supposed t'be. There be several ways t'pass from here t'Upside without Calypso's aid, an' the _Dutchman_ be one o' them. Sure there be some spirits wot still owe ye debts."

"I seem to remember releasing everybody who still owed the _Dutchman_ or its Captain a debt," Will pointed out.

"Aye, well, sometimes ye don't wash a debt clean simply because the other party don't think it's there anymore," Bootstrap countered. Will gave in.

"But would you know which spirits still think so?"

"Why not just call them an' see?"

"You mean, like," Will stretched his arms out dramatically before him, just a little irritable, speaking in an archly sonorous voice, " '_Oh_, spirits of the world under the real world or anywhere else or whatever, you who feel you owe me favors, please appear before me right now and-" The rest of Will's facetious words was cut out in a yelp (that was really more like a shriek) as something amorphous and human-shaped abruptly appeared next to him. And then a splash, as Will fell off the rail following narrative convention.

Bootstrap was trying very hard not to laugh as Will, splashing and coughing in the still, icy waters, abruptly remembered that _damnit_, he was immortal now and could be anywhere he wanted to on _his_ ship, and rematerialized on the deck.

The newcomer slowly coalesced into a girl who did not look more than fifteen, petite, with chocolate-dark skin and black hair woven into thousands of perfect braids, each ending in a silver bell that made no sound when she tilted her head. Her eyes were unnervingly silver, like the bells, and her lips were a perfect cupid's bow, wine-red. She wore a simple black frock, and she looked past Will to Bootstrap, and grinned in childish delight.

Will was surprised to see Bootstrap's worn face crinkle into an affectionate smile in turn. "Haven't seen ye fer dog's years, missy. Yer lookin' good. How's Jack?"

The girl frowned, sighed, and rolled her eyes. Bootstrap chuckled. "Lost ye again, did he?" When she nodded, he added, "Leastways he has the compass. An' 'tis not like ye aren't fond of Hector." The girl held up a finger. "I knows ye love Jack most, no need t'tell me. Just sayin'."

She grinned then, mischievously, and Will was conscious that he was staring, when the girl slipped nimbly off the rail and embraced Bootstrap, rubbing her cheek against a ratty sleeve, more catlike than human, lips parted, eyes closed. Bootstrap looked a little embarrassed, looking up at Will, though he didn't push her away. "Er. S'pose I should introduce ye. Missy, this is William Turner, my son."

The girl stared at Will thoughtfully, slowly looked him up and down, then frowned up at Bootstrap, first pointing at Will, then fluttering her fingers in an eerie imitation of Jack. Bootstrap coughed. "Ah, I see. No, I'm sure he didn't mean it. No, I'm _sure_, missy, no need t'get mad." The girl stepped back, pouting and folding her arms.

Will was getting impatient. "Bootstrap, who is she?"

"Ah? Thought ye'll have guessed by now," Bootstrap blinked. "Will, this is the Black Pearl."

--

Few people ever knew that one of the reasons why Jack always kept the compass with him was because it afforded him a source of endless solo entertainment. "Rum." The arrow whirled to the right, where he held a bottle in one hand. "Pearl." The arrow circled, then settled firmly to the left. "Rum."

All in all, Jack thought, settling down in the misappropriated skiff, anchored off the coast of a small island for the night, it could be worse. This time, he had ample leverage on which to get himself back on the _Pearl_, though ejecting Barbossa was going to be somewhat difficult. "Me ship, indeed. Hah! Can't a pirate have some decent shore leave without treacherous scumdog pox-faced scallywag mutinous whoreson traitors makin' off with their ships?"

He paused, at that point, because of late he was never too sure when he would start answering his own questions, and it was never polite to keep yammering on when there was someone else contributing to the conversation. Besides, even the great Captain Jack Sparrow needed to breathe in the middle of a tirade.

When the cool night air didn't seem to offer him dispute, Jack grunted in satisfaction. "Thought so. 'Course, Jack, see now, _not_ thinkin' was what got ye into this little mess, aye? An' the missy will be right pissed off her foremast at ye even when ye _do_ get her back this time, aye? An' ye only have yerself to blame, 'cos ye _knew_ that Gibbs couldn't be trusted t'keep watch even if his barnacled arse depended on it, aye?"

See, he didn't need anyone around to even berate him, he could do it to himself with much coherence, lucidity and alacrity.

Having fanned his ego further with this unlikely morsel of self-sufficiency, Jack settled even further down on the skiff, rocked by the wave, taking a deep swallow of the remaining rum in the bottle. And he had really been looking forward to having the _Pearl_ back without the threat of giant squid, the Navy or miscellaneous submersible ships over his head, too. Surely he deserved some sort of break. Jack grumbled, tossed the rum bottle over the side, and rolled over onto his flank, staring at the compass. "Rum." The needle pointed to the remainder of the stash. "Pearl."

The needle began to wheel, faster and faster, then it slowed, lazily whirling, as though scanning for something that wasn't there.

Horrified, Jack sat up, sickly sober, picking up the compass and shaking it. "_Pearl_."

The needle seemed to waver a little to the left, then it began to spin again.

It couldn't be. His ship couldn't be…

"No, no, no," Jack shook the compass, frantic with a sudden dull fear. "No, _no_. Yer broken, ye stupid compass! Rum." The needle settled toward the stash.

Jack placed the compass carefully on the deck, edged behind the rum, closed his eyes, counted to ten, pinched himself on the arm, and slunk back to the compass with comic caution, as though approaching a bomb. He picked it up between thumb and forefinger, then transferred it slowly and ceremoniously onto the palm of his left hand, visualizing his love.

"_Pearl_!"

The needle began to spin.

Jack all but dived for the anchor chain.

--

_Do ye fear death?_

James Norrington _knows_ he is going mad. The voyage seems to skip quickly in time; sometimes he wakes to days a week after the last, and he cannot repress the scratchy sensation in the back of his mind, now. There is an overwhelming sense of familiarity: he has a sensation of déjà vu each time he does even the tiniest actions, such as opening a door, looking out over deck, following the Lieutenant, eating at dinner. As though he has done everything before.

The next 'day', he finds that he can already predict what someone is saying to him, a heartbeat before they actually _say_ it, word for word. It frightens him, and he pleads weariness, to sit on his bunk and sleep and wish it were all a nightmare.

Something about that thought causes him to stiffen, and the hair at the back of his neck prickles. James sits up straight in bed. A _nightmare_. No, that could not be it: he can smell the oil of the lamp near the bed, a faint scent of salt, fish. "Real." James curls fingers into the sheets.

It is daytime, then it is nighttime, and James isn't sure how he knows it is, nor does he understand how the time seems to have leapt by, but he finds himself turning to slip out of the bed even before the ships shudders as though under some sort of impact, and there is a dull roar, rhythmic, tailed by a splintering sound, and screams. The scratchy sensation in his mind whispers a stream of urgent words of the same incomprehensible jargon that the sailors use; the only term James recognizes is _cannon_.

They were under attack!

He leaps for the door, just as the words in his mind gasp _no, don't, no, don't go out there, don't go_, and James bares his teeth. "I must."

_You can't stop it. I can't stop it. I didn't. You never did. You won't._

"Then I must try." James supposes the voice in his head _is_ his fear, after all, with a child's logic (it seems quite clear now), and he tries to assume the lofty, cool attitude of the ship's Lieutenant. "Fear is part of being human. A man conquers it."

The scratchy voice seems resigned. _Go then, and hate yourself for it._

--

Will stared at the girl. She stared back. The sun set.

In the darkness lit by impossible stars, the soft chime of the worlds' song faint around them, Will muttered, "I knew I was supposed to accept, in principle, several impossible things underneath the real world but I'm really stretching with this one."

The girl turned to Bootstrap and made several gestures in rapid succession. Will recognized at least one of them as being remarkably vulgar. Besides, Bootstrap was fighting a grin. "Did Jack teach ye that one? Thought so. Will be the Cap'n of the _Dutchman_ now. Missy, that one ye _don't_ show in any sort o' polite company. No, I _do_ count as polite company, thank ye very much." Bootstrap looked over the girl's shoulder to his son, apologetically. "Sorry 'bout this."

Will rubbed his temples, sighed, and stalked over to the helm, leaving Bootstrap to his seemingly one-sided conversation. He had a job to do.

It was nearly sunrise when Bootstrap finally stopped speaking quietly to the gesturing girl, and they stood at the rail, looking over the side. _The Pearl_, Will reminded himself, and tried to get his brain to wrap around the concept. He failed. He leaned his forehead on the helm and groaned, then a thought occurred to him. If the _Pearl_ was here, then what happened to her form in the upper world? Did it disappear? Become just another galleon? Could she return? Wasn't there some sort of price to pay?

Already feeling somewhat guilty for summoning her, however accidental, Will left the helm just as the sun rose and walked over to the pair. "Um."

The girl didn't look up, but Bootstrap turned around. "Aye. Sorry 'bout that again, Cap'n. Old friends, ye ken."

"I can see that," Will said, cautiously, as the girl continued to ignore him. "Er. Is she angry with me? Since I, well, called her down from wherever, and…"

"Don't matter. The black ship'll still be up there, same as ever. Mostly." Bootstrap jerked a forefinger at the sky. "Only one who'll probably notice t'would be Jack, if he were at the helm, an' she be tellin' me he's misplaced her again, anyway."

"You said there was a price to pay, for going back," Will began, with a guilty glance at the girl.

Bootstrap shook his head. "She's already paid that one. This one's her debt t'ye. Aye?"

The girl looked up, and nodded. Her fingers sketched a few signs, but try as Will might, he could not begin to decipher them.

Bootstrap, however, said, "She's willing t'guide one of the lost ones fer ye, but after that she be wantin' t'return upside, seein' as Jack be in a right panic if he finds her gone."

"Great," Will said, extending a hand. The Pearl stared at it as though it were a snake (a rotting, diseased and gangrenous one) until Will lowered his arm.

"She don't much like ye," Bootstrap said unnecessarily. "But she be wantin' t'know who's the lucky man ye wish t'save, so she can get to it."

"Will it be dangerous?"

The girl looked bored. Bootstrap coughed. "She did face down the _Dutchman_, Will."

"Right. Sorry. Er. I don't know." Will looked helplessly at Bootstrap. "How many people are in the Locker?"

"Not that many. Cap'n only sends a few to it. He marks them out, ye ken."

"Marks them out? How?"

"He'll ask them, 'Do ye fear death?'" Bootstrap frowned, his lip curling. "Last one he said that to was Navy. Wasn't meself at the time, tried t'stop him from savin' yer lady love, an', well, just before he died…"

"What Navy?" Will frowned. Elizabeth had not mentioned any…

"Don't know his name," Bootstrap shrugged. "Everybody called him the Admiral."

"James Norrington." That explained why the man hadn't been on the Endeavor. The warship could easily have taken on both pirate galleons, Will felt, if that had been so. "He is… he was a good man."

"Aye," Bootstrap said, clearly uncomfortable. "I would say, I wish I could have done different, but I've killed many Navy in me time, an' I doubt yer much unlike."

"This one is different," Will turned to the Pearl, who was watching them with a little frown. "You know Norrington, Pearl. He was er, one of your crew, once. Could you help him?"

She held out a hand, and waited. Bootstrap looked down at the small, unmarked palm. "Ye be takin' care now, missy. I know ye knows how, no need t'look at me like that. Will, ye have t'send her."

"Send her? How?"

Bootstrap ignored the way the Pearl was rolling her eyes. "Hold her hand, an' think of the Admiral. Wish her by his side. Magic's not so complicated, this side o' the world."

"That's all? That's… oh. She's gone."

"Beggin' yer pardon, son," Bootstrap said dryly, as Will stared at his own hands in apparent wonder, "But as Cap'n o' the most feared pirate ship on the seven seas, ye ain't very…"

"What?"

"… nothin'."

-tbc-


	2. Guidance

[A/N: Glad to see a lot of recognizable faces (well, LJ names, but you know). ;O Also sudden number of PMs for 'oi your link to the uncut Fathoms is broken!'. Sorry, has this seriously weird html filtering thing, and I'm real lazy to bypass it. Also, although I wanted to keep the 'Locker' segments of the story in present tense, I'm beginning to confuse myself, so I might turn to fully past after this.

String Theory

2

Guidance

The furred man drew back black lips into a grimace, as he pushed one long coffee-hued fingernail into the candle's flame. There was a scent, sharp, not unlike the thunder guns of Above, and he breathed deep, blinked amber eyes, as the flame turned a deep red, then black, outlined by a fierce white flicker that would have blinded mortal men. The Chamber was dark, shadows coiling about the single candle set over a tarnishing silver stand, but the blackbird shifted back a step, uneasy, cocking its head this way and that, its talons clicking on the cold flagstones.

"She returned."

The blackbird hopped back a step, clicking its beak, then shifted again, speaking in a tiny, piping voice, to the furred man's gravelly rumble. "As I have said, Master. And she has been sent to help a lost soul."

"Hn. Then she is in the Locker, now." The furred man withdrew his hand, and the flame was orange again, the shadows twisting about his bared feet. Paws, dusted the same tawny gold as his elongated face. His snout parted, long pink tongue lolling out in a silent laugh. "And she is loved?"

"Yes, Master. A certain…"

"I know who." He turned, with surprising grace, and sidled into the single stone chair, watching the candle flame. "He comes?"

"It is as you have predicted."

"Good. Give him some aid, but not enough that he would see it." The furred man settled down, pulling the heavy cloak more firmly over his shoulders. It was brown wool, shaded nearly black by the shadows, and was edged thickly with perfect eagle feathers. "What about the ferryman?"

"Still out of sorts, Master. He does not much understand the nature of his new occupation. But he has a guide."

"Human?"

"Human. His father."

"Hrr. Then that is no guide."

"Yes, Master."

"Then perhaps he would be more amenable to the offer I made his predecessor. And as I have observed, this one appears to enjoy bargains," the furred man murmured, as though to himself. "He is not marked, is he?"

"No. Calypso has returned to the oceans, and she is now both sides and one."

"She was never one to involve herself much in the matters of the land, on either side of the sunset," the furred man shook his head dismissively. "Hrr. But she has no fondness for us. Still, she may be distracted for years yet, with the return of what was hers. I must chance it. You may go, Blackbird."

"Yes, Master." With a flip of its wings, the blackbird landed safely on the single narrow window, which looked out into the starred night between the worlds. "Orders?"

"As I have said. Watch the one who follows. Make sure he reaches the Underside. And call in Anada'ti. I have work for he and his ilk."

The blackbird shuddered, every feather fluffing up in reaction. "_Him_?"

"Tell him he will be… hunting. That should quicken his step."

--

The ship had stopped shaking, at least, from the cannonfire, but James can hear gunshots and screams, more loudly as he runs down the corridor, looking around wildly. "_Mother? Brother?_"

The top deck. They are probably up on deck (_the gallery_, the scratchy voice whispers), or no, if they were being attacked, the women and children would likely be put down here, where he was, at the passengers' cabins, wouldn't they?

The corridor seems to go on forever, and the screams grow louder, as he approaches the cabin near the foot of the narrow stairs up to the gallery. It is with sickening clarity that he recognizes his mother's voice, and the scratchy voice in the back of his head begins its litany (_wrong, WRONG_), so loud now in his head that he feels it may burst-

All sound suddenly stops, and James hesitates just before he puts his hand on the cabin door. There is movement at edge of his vision, and he turns, with a gasp.

A pretty young girl of color looks at him solemnly, chocolate-hued hands crossed over a white buccaneer's coat, fit to her size. Under that she wears a red blouse that seems fit to her skin, whorled with patterns painful to follow, and a broad black strips from the waist seem to serve as a skirt, revealing a rather indecent amount of leg that disappears into high gray boots. Black lace at her cleavage, frothy at her wrists and knees. Dumbly, he notes her eyes are silver, as are the bells at every tiny, perfect braid in her hair.

"I haven't seen you about the ship," he says, then blushes when he realizes how inane that sounded. The situation recalls itself then, and he takes a step forward, his voice urgent. "You must hide. Hide somewhere! I think we are under attack, perhaps from pirates, and there are gunshots…" James' voice trails off, as his mind catches up with that statement. There _are_ no gunshots; not even the background noise of a merchant marine ship packed with passengers, only an eerie, unnatural silence.

The girl inclines her head, and she seems sorrowful, as she half-lids her eyes, dusting cheeks with long lashes. James forgets the door, and what may lie behind it. "Are you lost?"

She smiles, then, shakes her head, and instead points at him. He blinks. "What do you mean? And you are mute?"

She shakes her head.

"But you do not speak."

She nods, and beckons. James takes a step forward, then quickly, a step back, as behind the girl, on the hardwood wall to her right, words began to print in silver, in a scrawl, splotched, as though written by someone who had dipped their fingers in paint to do so.

I can help you out of here James Norrington 

_But it will get harder_

_This is your earliest fear_

_It is the least of your pain because _

_A child cannot remember much of pain_

_That is why your soul remains here_

_Repeating this_

_But you will lose yourself here_

_But it will end more quickly_

_If you leave_

_It will get harder_

_You cannot return here _

_If you do not want me to help you_

_Then say so and I will leave_

"My… my earliest fear?"

Words began to print to her left.

You are losing yourself in the boy you were 

_Already your voice is fading_

_How many times have you seen this room_

"Thirteen," James says, and inhales sharply. It felt as though his lips had moved of their own volition. "I do not understand, I…"

But his body seems to step forward, jerkily, automatic, and try as he might to try and force his hand down, he reaches out, palm up. The girl's smile has neither humor nor sorrow, as she takes his wrist.

James Norrington blinks his eyes, and curls both palms into fists, experimentally, allowing nails to bite into flesh, and then he lets out a long, shuddering breath, looking down at himself, his clothes. When his chin comes back up, his smile is wry. "I never thought I would ever be shorter than a lady again."

The girl grins, and pointedly ruffles his hair, then pinches his cheek. James bats her hand away as politely as he can, though he laughs. "Who are you?"

She points at herself, and makes an odd gesture with her thumbs and her right forefinger, then points at James. He is just about to apologize for being unable to read sign language, when he hears a soft voice in his mind. It echoes, and it sounds faintly feminine, but not the least human, whispery velvet, like a sea breeze on the twelfth hour of night. _Your guide._

James decides that it is quite rude after all for him to demand an introduction without the usual niceties. She lets go of his wrist, as he says, "Er… pleased to meet you. What is your name?"

The girl fishes out a necklace, more of a few beads at the end of a leather thong, and points at the pendant. A black pearl.

"Your name is Pearl?" The girl nods. James smiles, despite himself: it reminds him of his old life, playing at pirates and marines. "I knew a pirate ship called the _Pearl_, once."

The girl rolls her eyes. James is quick to apologize. "I am sorry if that gave offence. No? All right then. Firstly," and he dreads the answer to this, "Am I in hell?"

Pearl sighs, and looks impatient, but she shakes her head. _Davy Jones' Locker. To escape this, you need to meet all your fears and…_

"Master them?" James knows he sounds facetious, but this seems too trite for any of the concepts he had ever heard or entertained of the afterworld.

_Survive them_, Pearl corrects, looking irritable at the interruption. _Search them. Hidden in one of them is your heart. When you have your heart, only then can return._

"Return?"

_To the World Under the World,_ Pearl folds her arms, tapping at the fabric. _I should have written all of this down on parchment after the first Lost One that I guided. It would save all this silly questioning. Do you know all of you always ask the same questions? _

"You didn't answer my question," James counters, though he grins in turn.

_And to think I liked you when we first were acquainted,_ Pearl sticks her tongue out in a decidedly unladylike fashion. _You need your heart to exist in the World Under the World. Then you can choose to exist there and wander about until you are reborn, if that is what you wish, or try to find a way to go back to the World Above._

"Then what can you do to help me?"

_I can help you move in between your fears. And I can end it for you when you wish, by destroying your soul utterly._ Pearl grins then, showing perfect teeth, playful and girlish. _Are you finished here, or do you want to go to the next one? _

"How do I know what my heart looks like?"

The girl lets out a long-suffering sigh. _How am I to know? It is your heart, not mine. Now, do you wish to leave, or…_

"I'll look behind that door," James says, quietly.

Pearl abruptly sobers, her eyes narrowed and serious. _Are you certain? You already know what happens._

"I know. But as you say, I must survive my fears," James squares ten-year-old shoulders. "Take me to the next when I am done."

The girl watches as the boy enters the door and closes it. She whispers a word to the air, and waits for the screaming to begin again.

--

_This time, when he kills Barbossa, he was going to make sure the traitorous swine didn't come back._ Jack contented himself with dark thoughts as he fingered the compass at his belt, sauntering down towards the taverns from the docks. Barbossa would be in one of them, no doubt, and he owed Jack a long explanation, starting with exactly why the black ship was docked in Tortuga harbor without the presence that was indefinably the _Pearl_.

He was therefore a little surprised when what he had taken to be a drunken sot sprawled over a few crates to be loaded to an adjacent pirate ship straightened into his mutinous ex-First Mate. Barbossa yawned, leaning back, and readjusted his hat, leaning back against the crate behind him as though seated on some sort of throne. "Jack. Yer growin' slow in yer old age."

Jack had already drawn and cocked his pistol, only to look down Barbossa's own. The other damned pirate was laughing, in his slightly mad, harsh barks, his eyes narrowed, lips drawn into a bared snarl.

"What did ye do to me ship?"

"She's right there, Jack," Barbossa jerked his head to the side. "Shipshape an' repaired, if I say so meself. More than what I can say t'what ye did to me charts."

"She's _not_ there," Jack snapped. He could not remember when he had last been this consistently furious. "She's not _anywhere_."

Barbossa frowned. "Ye been out in the sun too long, Jack?"

Jack took a deep breath. Shooting Barbossa was very tempting right now, despite the equal chance of being shot in return. However, there was no real point, not when his lady-love might be needing his aid. "Hector. Did she… talk t'ye, at all? Recently?"

"No," Barbossa shrugged fluidly. "But I rather thought t'was that she was mad at me again fer leavin' without ye. Why?"

"Because me compass don't show her anywhere about, as o' half a week back," Jack narrowed his eyes. "And I be wantin' t'know exactly what ye did t'her."

"Would ye believe me when I say I did nothin', Jack?" Barbossa asked dryly. "What could I possibly have done t'yer ship, aye, that could've driven out her spirit? An' why would I want to? She was probably called."

"Ain't nobody she owe debt to who could call her," Jack began, then added, "At least, none _now_, seein' as the whelp decided to do a little housekeepin' on his predecessor's debt books."

"An' ye be so sure now that yer Pearl thinks just because he be cancellin' her debt that she be acceptin' 'tis so?" Barbossa uncocked his pistol, and stuck it back in his belt. "Didn't think ye fer the stupid sort, Jack. Much. If 'tis much comfort to ye, though, the whelp probably did it by accident."

"I'm going t'fuckin' _shoot_ Will," Jack muttered, though he lowered his pistol.

"So we be needin' t'do a bit o' parley," Barbossa drawled. "I want that chart, an' ye need me help t'get back down Below."

"I refuse t'go the way ye like to," Jack bared his teeth in a feral smile. "That way will wreck me girl as she is now."

"But ye could never find Shipwreck Cove by yer ownsies, an' ye need t'get there as fast as ye can without squabblin' over the ship," Barbossa pointed out with his annoyingly inexorable logic. "'Course, ye could always wait an' hang about the estimable Mrs Turner, an' hope ye don't suffocate under ten years worth o' repressed lovey-fuckin'-dovey when Mister Turner returns."

"An' what makes ye think I be wantin' t'go to Shipwreck Cove?"

"Don't play dumb with me, Jack," Barbossa ambled down from the crates. "Yer da's ship _Octavius_, and the _Flying Dutchman_, be the only ships wot can pass Below and back again easy as ye please. Sure ye be wantin' his help, since ye got no way o' callin' the whelp over, on this side o' the world. 'Sides, I get along wi' Cap'n Teague better than ye."

Jack took in a deep breath, dredging his memory for the vilest of names and invectives with which to pepper the older pirate, but Barbossa was already swaggering back towards the black ship and shouting orders. "To yer stations, ye scumdogs! Pintel, move yer scurvy arse t'the taverns an' whorehouses, round up the rest o' the sorry bastards an' tell them we be leavin' on the next tide. Sail-ho!"

_His _ship! Jack wished all manner of dire and humiliating fates on impostors and mutineers and infuriating ex-First Mates, and scrambled after Barbossa, hands flailing in his agitation. "What the _hell _d'ye think yer doin', ye thievin'…"

--

James stands on the deck of the _Nemean_, near the helm, watching the seabirds swoop down to feast on the bodies. He is long inured to the ruin that war on the seas could wreak on a man, and his gaze is dispassionate. Not even the stench, of death, rot and gunsmoke, bothers him now, despite still being trapped in a ten-year-old's body. Beside him, Pearl sits on the stair, elbows over her knees. She's waiting for his decision to move on.

"Doesn't allowing me to remember who I was make this less frightening for me?" James asks Pearl, when she seems content to be uncommunicative indefinitely.

_Perhaps_, Pearl replies enigmatically. _There was no need for you to go back to the room._

"No, but I needed to remember," James looks away. Sprawled just out of the captain's cabin was the body of Lieutenant Taylor, whom he had admired so much, distinctive in his white and blue coat. The names come easily to him now, and the faces. He does not want to think how, just a moment ago, or however time went in this world, he could not even remember what his mother's name was, or how she and his brother had died, victim to pirate savagery. Losing himself. He has been losing himself. The thought chilled him.

When he glances back at Pearl, he realizes she is laughing, her shoulders shaking silently. _You are a strange one, James._

"Thank you for coming here for me," James says then, honestly and earnestly.

Pearl inclines her head. _You have powerful friends._

"None of the supernatural sort that I recall," James' eyes are drawn to a pair of larger gulls, pecking at each other for the eyes of the helmsman.

_You will see, at the end of this,_ Pearl folds her arms now, tight across her chest. Her braids shift in the wind, but James does not hear the bells. _Do you wish to move forward, James?_

He ignores that. "How many have you helped before me?"

_Many. But only one succeeded by his own means._ Pearl smiles softly, as though remembering someone close to her, then she stretches, and leans back against the rail, boneless, careful to avoid splashes of blood.

"That isn't very reassuring," James murmurs. White feathers fleck red as the birds continue to squabble over the choicest parts. "Why did you ask me to come up to the deck? Nothing about this frightened me even then. I was too much in shock, up until rescue by a passing ship."

Pearl's smile turns enigmatic, again. _Perhaps I was a little mistaken. But we did have to look for your heart._

"I don't feel it, if I'm supposed to feel anything," James turns his gaze to the sea. "I'm ready to move, now."

--

Too long passes before Anada'ti manages to rouse his pack from their bloodlust. They had wasted far too much time, driven mad by the strong scent of their prey and the flesh-blood-death about them. He bares a gaping maw and hisses, crouching on the last spot where their prey had been. His pack cowers, scratching long black nails over their skulls, their arms. They break skin, at times, and their blood is a grayish blue, viscous and translucent.

"Tricked! Shame! Shame!" Anada'ti snarls. "Shame! Shame!"

The prey is far smarter than he has thought, tracking their scent all about the dream-human flesh-blood-death. Anada'ti drags his knuckles over the splintering wood, growls in a rumbling crescendo of frustration, whirls, and aims a punch at the rail. It splinters under a deceptively wiry fist, and Anada'ti settles back into a crouch, hissing. He is the largest of his pack, all of them with the appearance of tall men with spindly limbs, who walked in a stooping crouch and ran on fours with their knuckles. Their faces were hairless, eyes set far apart, near their pointed ears, their mouths wide grins lined with sharpened teeth. The Anada'dvtaski were men, once, before the Killing that had freed them.

When he feels the pack has been properly chastised, Anada'ti sniffs at the air with his flattened nose. There is a scent, though steeped in the blood-scent, but not enough to distract entirely, crossing and crossing back over itself. But Anada'ti can be patient.

Their quarry _was_ smart. Good. Anada'ti would have taken no pleasure in hunting them, were it too easy.

-tbc-


	3. Storytales

[A/N: And since I'm on a reading comics whirl recently… highly recommending Bill Willingham's Fables. :D Loved it. BTW, it seems that while filming as Captain Teague, Keith Richards managed to spend all the days filming extremely drunk, and at one point sustained injuries falling out of a coconut tree.

String Theory

3

Storytales

"That's very curious," James says, peering over the parapet of the fort. Just a few metres below him, Elizabeth was frozen in fall, one white arm outstretched, her beige dress and white petticoats a cloud about her feet. Far beneath, the waves of the sea resemble a painting the white froth immobile about the rocks.

Pearl looks sulky, cross-legged on the parapet next to him, arms crossed. _Wasn't she your lady-love?_

"Why?" James turns about, to lean against the parapet. "By the way, I am not so sure why we are here. Proposing to Elizabeth was indeed harrowing, but only at that time, and not anything, well, horrific."

The girl glares at him, still profoundly put-out for some reason that James could not discern. _Well! And I thought that this would be easy. Didn't you love Elizabeth Swann?_

"I've never stopped caring for her. I love her, but I am no longer in love with her. It was clear that she loved Will," James shrugs, peering over the side at the frozen form, then it suddenly occurs to him what Pearl was trying to do. He begins to chuckle, turning his cheek up to the sun; in the dream world, he does not feel its warmth, only a static temperature just this side of the cold.

Pearl bares her teeth in a snarl, and pointedly turns her chin again, kicking her boots at the air and transferring her glare at the frozen girl. Finally, James manages to calm down enough to apologize. "I am sorry for complicating your work, Pearl, but I very much doubt an incarnation of Elizabeth would contain my heart."

_Well, it should_, Pearl replies irritably, without looking at him. _So you really have no idea whatsoever where or what your heart could be? Thank the Elders you've only lived thirty-odd years, then! Or we'll be here for fucking forever!_

"Language," James murmurs, though the expletive pushes a bubble of mirth back up his throat.

_Hmph!_ Pearl peers down at the rocks, far below, then brightens. _What about your ships? You're a Captain, after all. Or something. I could never keep track of Navy titles._

James follows her gaze. At the docks of Port Harbor, he could clearly make out the forms of the _Dauntless_ and the _Interceptor_. Both ships gone, now, and through his fault; but even if they had not been, he would no longer have had captaincy, as an Admiral. He turns his face back up to the sun, closes his eyes. "No, I doubt it. I am not even sure what you mean when you speak of a heart."

_You're dead, James Norrington,_ Pearl says patiently, _So what is the difference between you being dead, and you being alive?_

"That's a profoundly metaphysical question, and you could really save a lot of time simply by telling me the answer," James replies with mild reproach, only to face a tongue being stuck out in his direction.

_I am a guide, not a teacher._ Pearl snaps.

"The biggest difference is it seems I am some sort of ghost, trapped in my memories, instead of being flesh and blood and up in the 'real' world-"

_Yes, that's you being descriptively different_, Pearl interrupts rudely. _What's the fundamental difference?_

"Between being alive and being dead? Not being the other, I suppose." James says dryly. Annoyingly circular questions require annoyingly circular answers. He is rather surprised when Pearl claps her hands, slowly and sarcastically.

_Precisely! So you are dead because you are all the way not alive. If you are all or most of the way alive then you will be able to exist in the World Under the World. Right now you can only exist in the Locker, or the Realms Beyond. _Pearl reaches over and prods him pointedly in the shoulder to punctuate her point. _Understand yet, sweetheart?_

"That's still very unhelpful," James grins as he says this, but Pearl pouts, and folds her arms tightly over her chest.

You're the one who's very unhelpful. But I suppose this is your journey to make, and I'm already all but clubbing you with hints, and you still can't… Pearl seems to dredge more patience within her, evidently difficult since James finds her irritation at him mysteriously amusing. All right. Think about your actual heart. You do have one, don't you? What does it do for you?

"Keeps me alive. Or it did."

Very good! Now apply that premise to the heart I'm referring to. By this time I'm sure you understand it's something on the other side of the metaphor.

"I happen to have outgrown charades about twenty years ago," James says mildly, but holds up both hands in surrender when Pearl bares her teeth. "All right. I'll play. We're looking for something that keeps or kept me alive."

Close, sweetheart, Pearl drawls, in arch patience.

"The other side of the metaphor. Something that made me feel alive?" James stares at the Pearl when she breaks out in a smile. "That's all?"

Evidently not a 'that's all', since we're still here, aren't we? Pearl looks irritable again, as James appears deeply unimpressed by the revelation. For most people, James, that's their best-beloved. She gestures curtly at the frozen dream-Elizabeth. Or their favorite things. Another gesture, this time towards the harbor. And deep within fears, because your kind tends to remember poor memories more starkly than the good. Though I suppose… Navy, male, a decade towards the slide to decrepitude…

"Don't I get to make suggestions?" James inquires wryly, "Since we're now on the same proverbial page?"

Quiet, you. I'm thinking. Pearl climbs to her feet, and begins pacing about the parapet, between James' elbow and the corner of the wall. Navy, male, little problem…

"What little problem?"

You'll see, Pearl says, with her irritating enigmatic grin. I think I know just where to go next.

--

Jack stood at the helm, having relieved Cotton for the night, running fingers over the now-silent hardwood and occasionally looking at the compass. He was vaguely thankful that Barbossa no longer seemed inclined to be quarrelsome, after Jack had reacted to sharp quips about who got to occupy the Captain's quarters with a distracted shrug that had unnerved the older pirate. There was a fair wind, and they were making good time, but he felt restless.

He heard rather than saw Barbossa amble up the stairs towards him, to lean against the rail, the monkey perched on his shoulder. For once, the old pirate's face wasn't drawn into his normal sneer. "Ye haven't been sleepin' fer days, Jack."

"Since when did ye get this concerned over me wellbein'?" Jack had a number of accompanying jibes automatically lined up, but his heart wasn't in it. But of course, she wasn't here, or anywhere on this side of the world. Being on the black ship without her whispering to him felt distinctly uncomfortable.

"Since 'tis unavoidably obvious t'me that t'get the Pearl back ye need t'be in reasonable good health," Barbossa snorted. "Ye can't use that compass when ye pass out, can ye?"

Jack frowned at Barbossa, then, as with anything he did not quite understand, he pulled lips into a impish grin, fluttering the fingers of a hand, the other keeping them easily on course. "Why, Hector. I never knew ye cared. I'll be sure t'tell her when we catch up with her."

"She knows I care," Barbossa said dryly. "Not t'the point o' bein' obsessed like ye, but I'm well enough friends with the Pearl, Jack. Ye think she'll suffer just anyone t'be her Cap'n?"

"Would be interestin' t'see what would've happened, were that whelp t'have tried t'Cap'n her," Jack smirked, thinking back on old betrayals. His lady-love could be right vicious when she wanted to be, even in this form. "Don't know why or what he called her t'do, though. Few suspicions."

"I think he probably sickened up with one o' those terrible bouts o' guilt, about others trapped in the Locker," Barbossa looked thoughtful, ignoring the monkey's chatter next to his ear. "Bein' guilty an' broodin' seems t'be the prerogative o' the latest generation o' brats, I hear. Seems they think it attracts the ladies."

"An' sent her out t'fetch one o' the poor swabs caught in it?"

"If he just called her down by accident, or just t'talk, she'll already be back here, aye?"

Barbossa had a good point. And Jack had already considered that possibility, however uncomfortable it made him. He had been willing to die rather than return to the Locker. A place that wasn't quite a place, constructed by a monster shaped by his own cruelty, that set one in a cycle of fear where the only key to escape was to remember what it was like to be alive.

Trapped in a flat endless white plain, on land, no wind, and with no one else about him… he would have been lost too long ago if his lady-love had not somehow endeavored to end up in the Locker with him. But it had taken a Goddess to extract him.

"There's no need t'be so worried, I should think," Barbossa guessed at his thoughts. "'Tis not like she hasn't done this before. She was many things before she was a ship, she be tellin' me. The real question is what yer goin' t'do, Jack, if ye find she's really in the Locker, aye?" Barbossa's toothy grin had all the mercy of a cat. "Seein' as ye've said yer never goin' back t'the Locker, aye?"

Jack grinned in turn, swaying back against the wheel, shaking a forefinger in the general direction of the older pirate. Ice was creeping up his spine, but none of his misgivings showed in his voice. "But as ye say, Hector, she's done all o' this before."

Barbossa was seldom fooled by his mannerisms, however: the old pirate merely scoffed. "An' if yer not worried at all, then why are ye in such a panic t'get t'the other side?"

"Don't think I believe ye for an instant when ye say yer willin' t'help me out o' fondness for me girl an' the charts," Jack glanced back up at the stars, then absently adjusted course, ignoring Barbossa's question. "Few things can pass between both sides o' the sunset in one piece, an' ye need her t'find the Fountain on the other side an' get back again."

"Be that so," Barbossa smirked. "The older ye get, Jack, the more efficiently ye try t'organize yer life. See, not all o' us have the leisure o' getting into all manner o' scrapes one after another, aye?"

"But evidently not organized enough t'be lookin' after yer maps," Jack pointedly patted the scroll from where it stuck out of his greatcoat pocket. "Didn't remember that bit, did ye now?"

Barbossa rolled his eyes. "Little victories, Jack."

--

"Was that really necessary?" Will gestured at the helm, where his father was slumped asleep on the deck before it. The lost souls about him continued to ignore him and his guest, drifting about the ship vacantly.

"I like my privacy." The newcomer was at least seven feet in height, dressed in an elaborate oxblood buccaneer's coat ribbed with white lace and edged with gold brocade, a cream sash about its waist. There was something in the hunched posture of the creature akin to a man, but the dog-man's head was more like a wild dog's, with a long snout and blackened lips drawn nearly constantly in a lolling grin. Its eyes were bright amber in tawny, wiry fur. Its hands sported short, black curved claws at the end, like a dog's, but its feet were snug in large bucket-topped white boots. A long fox's brush of a tail swayed as the newcomer bowed. "I am pleased to meet you, William Turner of the Flying Dutchman."

"You have me at a disadvantage, sir…?"

"You may call me Kojote, Captain Turner." The dog-man bowed again, its triangular ears, tufted in black, twitching back, then forward. Though its muzzle moved when it spoke, the words were not distorted, as Will would have thought. "I am a denizen of the World Beneath the World. I thought it polite to pay my respects to the new Captain."

"That's um, very kind of you," Will said warily. If the reason were so innocent, Kojote would not have put his father to sleep. "But you're here on business, Kojote?"

"Very perceptive, Captain Turner," The dog-man ambled around the mainmast, peering up at the ragged sail, tail wagging absently behind it. "I would indeed have enjoyed being able to leisurely make your acquaintance as a friend, but business, as you say, must needs be first. And it must be a secret, between you and I, for us non-mortals tend to be jealous of their flocks, and Calypso is no exception."

"Calypso has no hold on me."

"You are her ferryman," the dog-man pointed out, with a graceful wave of a clawed hand at the ghosts wandering about the deck. "But for all her talk of destiny, she no longer needs you. Not when she is now both sides and one, no longer bound to the Upper World in any shape or form. She can take the souls herself to the next side, if she were so inclined. There is no real need for you to perform this onerous duty on her behalf, freeing her to make mischief at will on both sides of the sunset."

"And how can you help me here?" Will pointed at the scar obvious on his open shirt. "I have given up my heart in bargain to the Dutchman. I have nothing else to bargain with, if we are even thinking of the same payment."

"To be mortal again, to grow old and die with your lady-love?" The dog-man's smile was all sharp teeth and a long pink tongue. "Immortality has a price, as you've been quick to discover, and that she may not pay. And you'll be surprised about what else you have left to put on the table, Captain Turner."

"To live with her, to grow old and die with her, that is all I would wish of life. Now I can look forward to perhaps five more days with her, before she passes on," Will admitted, averting his eyes to the ghosts. Here a drowned child, her frock ribbed with seaweed; there a portly merchant, his eyes eaten out by crabs. "But I don't want to end up with…" Will mimed tentacles under his chin with wriggling fingers.

Kojote's tongue lolled to the side in a silent laugh. "Oh, I think we can manage that. But I need you to do a few things for me before I can effect your price."

"I've learned to look past my price to what the other party wishes to get out of the transaction," Will retorted, folding his arms pointedly over the reddened scar on his chest. "What do you want of all this, Kojote?"

"I have a few debts to settle with our dear Calypso," Kojote's ears twitched forward, then back. "Nothing would suit me more than for her to be bound again to one of her original tasks. I enjoyed the quiet that reigned when she was captured in human form. Now she is free, and is proving to be quite the hindrance."

"What are you?" Will blinked, at the rather offhanded way Kojote had just referred to a Goddess. "Another God?"

"A storytale, Captain Turner," Kojote's tongue lolled out again, and his shoulders shook with merriment at a private joke. "Just a storytale."

--

The Black Pearl docked to the sight of Octavius being outfitted. Jack hurriedly scrambled off his ship at the sight, only to nearly run into Teague, who had been leaning on a stack of barrels, chewing tobacco and staring absently into space. He smelled very strongly of rum, and somewhat less so of whisky. "Where are ye goin'?" he asked, agitated.

Teague's slow smirk was on the far bend of insobriety, normal for the man, and he rolled his shoulders into an unhurried shrug, spoke in a drawl husky from too much drink. "Waiting for you to get here, boy." He tugged briefly on the rim of his hat, when Barbossa sauntered off the gangway. "Hector."

"Teague. Ye goin' somewhere?"

"Underside, aye?" Teague looked back over at his crew, who were loading crates aboard the Octavius to the backdrop of sailors' rough chatter. "Left a few in charge o' the Cove, should be enough to hold it 'till we get back."

"Somethin' happened t'yer arm?" Jack peered at Teague's right arm, which was tucked under his battered coat, slung in bandages.

"Fell out o' a coconut tree," Teague narrowed his eyes. Neither Jack nor Barbossa even cracked the tiniest hint of a grin. Satisfied, the Captain of the Octavius straightened up a little unsteadily from the crates. "Octavius don't have much room for your whole crew, boy. Take five men."

"Five? Why five?"

"Just in case you'll be needing to crew a ship back up to this world by yourself," Teague began a slow, meandering walk towards his ship. "I got business down Below to settle before coming back, so this may be a one way trip for you on my ship."

Jack glanced at Barbossa, who shrugged. "I can handle pickin' out the crew."

"Ye'll have t'leave someone a wee bit more trustworthy t'look after the ship, if yer comin' along," Jack looked over his shoulder, to where Teague had tripped over a coil of robe and fallen heavily, cursing in a slurred voice. "The old man's been drinkin' heavily again."

"Doubt it'll prove much o' a problem havin' t'keep the ship watched, if yer plannin' on havin' the Pearl manifest Below," Barbossa looked thoughtfully at the current complement of crew. "Why not ye pick while I settle things with Teague?"

"No, I'll talk t'him," Jack said, then couldn't help but smirk at the familiarity of it all, with neither of them at each other's throats (much), when there was business to be done. "Bein' a first mate again, Hector?"

"Old habits, mebbe," Barbossa drawled, "But I'm just tryin' t'let ye do the task where a fuck-up on yer part ain't goin' t'cost us too dear. If ye piss yer da off, how're we goin' t'get Under?"

"Thanks very much fer the vote o' confidence."

"No problems, Jack," Barbossa returned his smirk, before heading back up the gangway to the Pearl.

It didn't take very long to catch up with Teague, who had, after picking himself up from the rope, fallen over for no reason a few steps afterwards.

"Yer not goin' t'help?" Jack couldn't control his disappointment. As much as it had been more than four decades with him being unable to understand his immortal father, he had rather thought that Teague would have been willing to extend somewhat more in the way of aid.

"Don't think she needs help," Teague got up, dusted himself off, then walked somewhat absently into a crew member, causing a crate to be dropped heavily, barely missing the Captain's toes. "Watch that, Anton."

"An' why's that?" Jack watched the real victim of the accident babble an apology and cringe, as Teague ambled past him up the gangway. "She helped ye out o' the Locker once. Don't ye owe her?"

"When you get older," Teague managed out of a sheer miracle to get on deck without falling over into the drink, having teetered dangerously at the edge for a few moments, "You'll find that 'debt' and 'owe' don't tend to work very well in the same sentence with old friends."

"Then, as ye say, an old friend…"

"She don't need aid in the Locker, boy. You'll only get in her way. Normally." Teague managed to evade further accidents with busy crewmen, heading towards the foremast of his galleon. On a barrel before it was one of the wrinkled old men that Jack vaguely remembered as being assistant custodians to the Code. The man was huddled in a thick quilt stitched with disconcertingly bright patches of pink cloth, despite the weather being fairly warm.

"But yer makin' no fuss whatsoever 'bout helpin' me get Underside," Jack pointed out, now somewhat suspicious. "Yer always refused to before."

"I said 'normally', didn't I?" Teague paused next to the old man, and prodded him in one thickly quilted shoulder. "Meet the Codger. If he had a name, he's long forgotten."

"I've seen him before," Jack acknowledged warily. His father's non-sequiturs tended to segue into highly random and often dangerous little 'episodes'. Jack made sure that he was very close to the rail.

"Usually he just has the everyday care of the Codex," Teague said, ignoring Jack's sudden nervousness and leaning heavily against the foremast, even sliding down an inch. "But sometimes when he sleeps, he has a very interesting alternative gift." Teague prodded the old man again.

Codger's wrinkled lips worked, opening and closing, then he whispered, almost inaudible under the shouts of the working crew, "The Eaters walk a waking dream. The Immortal takes arms against the Winters' Spring. Eternal Youth is not yours to give. The ferryman seeks a way to live. Coyote is hunting the Raven."

"Coyote hunts the Raven," Teague inched himself up the mask into a somewhat more forbidding, straight-backed poise, as Codger's wrinkled head sunk down on the quilt, the old man letting out a soft snore. "That's why I said 'normally'."

"Well, that's exceedingly unhelpful, if I say so meself, an' I don't see what it has t'do with the Pearl."

Teague blinked slowly, at that, tilting his head, then began to chuckle in soft huffs under his breath. "She never? Well, you learn something new everyday." When Jack opened his mouth to say something snide, Teague narrowed his eyes. Jack's mouth snapped shut, and curved into a weak grin. Satisfied, the Captain pushed himself off the mask and began to walk (stagger) towards the helm. "We leave in less than an hour, boy. Try t'get on board in time."

-tbc-


	4. Little Problems

[A/N: lots of work in legal practice diploma. -.-

String Theory

4

Little Problems

To an outsider, the large square room would be somewhat akin to a hunter's trophy room, filled wall to wall with beautifully preserved stuffed animals, from a tiny little robin standing on a bronze plaque to a large bear, reared up on its hind legs in a corner, to a massive python, its jaws dusty and agape, draped over a table around a meerkat peeking out of its burrow and a mouse carrying a nut. The centerpiece of the room was a massive gray wolf, its shoulder the height of a man, its lips drawn back in a snarl.

Kojote stood before the multi-tiered glass case that held the smaller birds, wondering what to send out. A gull? A tern? An albatross? He needed to keep an eye out on Captain Turner that wouldn't be too obvious. A fish, perhaps. He turned amber eyes up to the creatures in question, stuffed on plaques adorning the wall behind the birds' case, ears twitching back. No. Too obvious, in a sea without normal fish. A bird, then, small enough to hide within the ship, but a sea bird, for they had no love of the land's creatures, and would be unlikely to be much inclined to aid her. Kojote unlocked the case carefully from a ring of keys at his belt, and delicately plucked one feather off the tern.

There was a small flash of green in his palms, and Kojote found himself holding a struggling, pecking tern, thrashing wildly. He growled, and the bird stopped, settling to roost on his finger. "Kojote," the tern spoke, shaking out its wings as though coming out from a deep sleep. "What use do you dictate of me?"

"An easy task, Tern," Kojote closed the case, locked it, then started for the door in a loping gait. "I need you to find and follow Calypso's ferryman. Hide in his ship, listen and observe. Three of her favorite children are coming to this side of the sunset, and I would not be able to return by myself without attracting her attention."

"Hide? Until?"

"Until the one known as Jack Sparrow goes to the Locker. If he refuses to, which I think unlikely, you are to stay and see."

The tern clacked its beak, tilting is head. "What mischief are you planning now, Coyote?"

"You know me, tern," Kojote laughed his silent laugh, teeth bared and tongue lolling. "I am always full of fun and games. And I would think our dear sister the Raven would expect no less from me."

"Raven has returned?" the tern hopped a step to the right on Kojote's clawed hands, twittering excitedly.

"Aye, she has, to her oldest role, which is why I may only send agents. As you know, she is at her strongest in the world of dreams and half-dreams." Kojote locked the door to the room behind him, and trotted towards a window. Tern flared its wings under the first breath of the wind. They were far from the ground, the tower wreathed by darkening clouds. "Go, observe, and come back. And do not speak to anyone, or anything; do not approach anyone, or anything. I bind you by your blood; if you betray me, I will swallow your focus."

"I know," the tern said, seemingly unfazed by the drawled threat, even when brought up to level with Kojote's jaws. "I will go, and I will return. But know this, Coyote. For every wrong you have committed there will be a reckoning someday, that you will pay in full."

"Oh, I would not know about that," Kojote said, and laughed his silent laugh, as he tossed the tern out of the window, watching it arc south towards the Dead Man's Sea.

--

"I wouldn't have called _this_ frightening," James tells the Pearl dryly. "Or are we no longer trying?"

Cannonballs splinter the rail and deck as the Navy ship _Reprisal_ exchanges fire with the pirate ship _Envious_, the scent of gunpowder, the salt spray, blood and sweat an all too familiar stench to James. Somewhere to the left, an unlucky member of the gun crew screams his last, amidst the shouts of other marines as they struggle to perform their allocated duties; at the gunwale, at the rigging. The ships close in on each other, preparing to board. Under Lieutenant Drake's command, the _Reprisal_ had managed to outmaneuver the slower _Envious_, loosing a round of broadside fire at the pirate ship's stern. _Envious_, perhaps recognizing its moral peril, had chosen to fight to the last.

_This_ is James' first naval battle as a marine. The midshipman's uniform feels as stifling now as it had then, before he had wholly become used to cravats and several layers of clothes (the idiosyncrasies of Lieutenant Drake regarding fashionable battle gear being a joke of some currency at the time). He steps towards the rail as the grappling hooks bite into the hardwood, watching the pirates prepare to swing over. To his right, at the helm, Lieutenant Drake yells, "All hands, prepare to repel boarders!"

Pearl stands at his side, her inquisitive, darting glances more characteristic of a sightseer, and she grins impishly at him. "Oh, we'll see, James. Don't let up your guard now, though! If you die to this, you die forever."

"I wouldn't be afraid of this rabble," James replies, sighting down the rifle in his hands. He feels the recoil slam into his shoulder, then watches one of the boarders stumble back with a shriek, tumbling into the waves. "And I am far better now than I was then, at warfare." Another shot, another kill. But the boarders are swarming the ship, and James discards the rifle in favor of his blade. "Pearl, perhaps you should go below decks, to the hold."

"Are you saying something about me, James?" Pearl sticks her tongue out at him as she steps to his side. She holds her hands out, palms up, beside her, and threads of white fire writhe out from the tips of delicate fingers, forming an outline of a rapier's guard, and then two long, thin blades lined in bright flame.

"I don't want you to get hurt," James turns to argue, even as the first pirate, shouting unintelligible Araby curses, charges at him, swinging a cutlass wildly. James sidesteps and slices the side of the man's throat in an economical upswing of his blade, then crosses blades with the pirate behind him, parrying a stab, then feinting high, to push up the man's blade; and finally a thrust past the pirate's broken guard. He kicks the body off, finds himself back to back with Pearl.

"I won't," she laughs gaily. Her blades seem insubstantial, ignoring guards altogether as she stabs and slices; no scent or sight of burned flesh, only dream-pirates collapsing. Neither the pirates nor the marines appear to find her presence untoward. "Oh, this is fun!"

"Warfare is not meant to be fun," James chides, though the exhilaration is building within him; it was always in the cross of blades, surrounded by the stench of naval war, that he had always felt the most… "Pearl, did you-"

James does not get to finish that question. The remaining pirates, pushed towards the rail by the marines, begin to _warp_, their flesh turning grotesquely fluid, like melting candlewax. In horror, James takes a step back, dimly registering Pearl's wild laughter, as the mouths of the pirates flow, becoming wider, lined with sharpened teeth; their arms becoming longer, clawed at the ends; their skin paling to parchment, their legs becoming spindly, their backs bowed. One roars, in a sound that was disturbingly almost human, and with a swipe, smashes a marine back against the mainmast with a wet crunch.

"What in the _blazes_…?"

"Meet our little problem, James," Pearl's grin is now feral, watching as some of the 'pirates' give snuffling, hungry gasps at the sight of the freshly killed.

Two break ranks, clawing their way to the bodies, and bury their skulls in meat ruined by cannonfire, making James suppress a shudder at the sound of teeth eagerly rending flesh. As more marines are swatted aside like flies, more and more get distracted, to the point of hissing and swiping at each other for the choicest parts. The survivors fall back in fright to James, as Lieutenant Drake is casually beheaded by one of the monsters, with an easy yank of long claws.

"Can they be hurt?" James asks the first thing on his mind, and blinks, as Pearl smiles warmly at him. "What?"

"Good! You are a fighter. Yes they can, James. Their hunger is the focus of their continued existence, when they were driven out of the lands by the First Children. To kill them, you need to stab them through their mouths, or slice up their bellies. But they have a long reach, and an inhuman strength, and do not think them stupid. Were they not consumed by blood-hunter from the freshly dead, it is likely most of your men would already be dead."

"That may not change," James mutters, as the remaining monsters, numbering nine, amble slowly forward, hissing. "Steady, men. These can be killed by blade-work. Stab the mouths, or the bellies."

The marines appear to straighten, though many of their blades tremble. The monster in the center, the tattered clothes of the pirate it had been still hanging over its shoulders, seems the largest, and it turns glittering eyes to Pearl. "Raven. Raven!"

"Who sends you, Anada'ti?" Pearl asks, narrowing her eyes. "I thought you Eaters free to menace the Otherlands, unfettered by a master's yoke."

The monster's laugh is ugly and distorted. "Coyote asks us to hunt. Hunt the Raven! Kill the Lost One, trap the Raven. Kill the Raven, and feed."

"Coyote, you say," Pearl mutters. "I suppose I should have known."

"Is there something _I_ should know?" James inquires, his voice strained, as the monsters approach them, hissing and snuffling.

"Don't die."

"Thanks very much for the clarification," James grits his teeth, but Pearl is already starting forward, her blades held to either side. "Courage, men."

"Those dream-men cannot hurt us, Raven," Anada'ti snarls, then jerks back as a pistol shot slams into the shoulder of the monster to his right, making it howl in shock and pain. "How…!"

"When Coyote sent you to hunt me in the world of dreams and half-dreams, Anada'ti," Pearl says coldly, "Perhaps he failed to tell you that it is in this world that I have the most power, and I can bend many rules to suit my will."

Anada'ti growls, then screeches a command at his pack. They break ranks, surging forward with their disconcerting, wet gasps of hunger. As much as the blades and pistol shot of the marines seem to hurt them, they appear to disregard pain, using their impossible strength to tear into the men. James ducks under a grab for his head, wrinkling his nose at the reek of unwashed skin and the sweet rot of flesh, then has to dive to the side to avoid a fist punching down at him, that splinters the deck. As the monster growls and tugs at its trapped fist, James thrusts his blade through its maw. There is a choked gargle, then the creature explodes into white ash that scatters in the sea wind, regardless of the spray.

To his left, with triumphant shouts, the marines bring down another by sheer number. Pearl again seems to be faring far better than the rest with her supernatural blades, coolly slicing through clawed arms when they swiped at her, inexorably forcing her way towards Anada'ti. James attempts to follow, but doesn't manage to dodge a swipe in time, knocked spinning across the deck and into a couple of marines, the breath slammed out of his body, the flare of pain in his side speaking of at least a broken rib.

Pearl cries "James!" and tries to turn back, but Anada'ti darts in front of her, blocking her way. James grits his teeth against the pain as the marines help him up, muttering gasped thanks as two of the creatures close in on them. There are more coming, from the point of boarding, sated by the blood-flesh; three, four.

One lunges, and slowed by his injury, James barely manages to pull himself aside; his leg clawed bloody; he twists, and drives his blade forward as the monster pauses, its snuffling gasps louder at the sight of fresh blood. As it explodes into ash, he sees the other creature smash one of the marines who had cushioned his fall against the deck with a horrific crunch of shattering bone; but with his dying breath the marine stabs his blade upwards, into the creature's belly. Ash, and death. James looks up in time to see Pearl slice off one of Anada'ti's hands, from the wrist, and the monster staggered back, howling in rage and pain. Before she manages to slit its belly, the creatures vanish.

Pearl shudders, turning her face up, as the blades at her hands dissipate into smoke, then she runs towards him, nimbly sidestepping the dead, her voice panicky. "James, James. How hurt are you?"

"Leg," James sits down heavily, inspecting the damage. It looks worse than it is, three parallel lines down his thigh to his calf. Pearl pats the deck, and the surgeon's kit appears. James grabs the bottle of spirits and grits his teeth as he cleans the wound, then frowns at Pearl as she begins to smile. "What now?"

Pearl wordlessly puts her hand gently over his chest, and it takes James a long moment to realize his heart is beating.

Shocked, he nearly drops the bottle, then he chuckles, a little painfully. "So what made me feel most alive was war?"

"Aye, sweetheart." Pearl sits cross-legged beside him. "Navy and male, I said. Let's leave." She presses cool fingers against his forehead.

Nothing happens. James blinks. "And then?"

Pearl frowns, squeezes her eyes shut, then finally leaps to her feet, looking annoyed. "I don't understand. I should be able to…" she takes a deep breath, tilting her head. "All the ways to the rest of your memories are open, but the way out is tangled. That should not be. You already have your heart again."

"Tangled?"

"Aye, James. The way out from the Locker is a treacherous path, when a Lost one is still half a soul. Only when it no longer belongs in the Locker does it straighten out. This is the best way I can describe it in your language." Pearl purses her lips, fingers tapping her coat. "This is heavy spellwork, to warp the rules so."

"So what now?" The wound cleaned, James begins to bind it.

"Tortuga."

"What?"

--

The _Octavius _crossed the realms with a minimum amount of flamboyance or magical mystery. One moment it was sailing out of Shipwreck Cove; the next, on a vast, trackless sea, its sails full despite the lack of any wind. Jack frowned as the two stupid pirates, the fat one and the thin one, cowered at the sight, and sidled up to Barbossa, who had been looking down at the new sea with interest. "Cotton an' Marty I understand, but why those two pea-brained idiots?"

"Because like many idiots, they have an amazin' amount o' luck," Barbossa drawled, with a significant glance at Jack himself. "An' I be thinkin' we need all the luck we can get, this side o' the world. By the way, p'haps ye should be askin' yer da what business he's up to. He won't tell me."

"What makes ye think he'll be any more forthcomin' with old Jack?"

"Worth a try, aye?" Barbossa jerked his head at the helm, where Captain Teague was now miraculously sober, looking irritable but otherwise keeping them efficiently on course. "Heard one o' his men offer t'get him some rum, an' he refused, said he needed t'get some thinkin' done."

"Really now. That's _very_ curious," Jack narrowed kohl-lined eyes. "'Bout his business, or ours, or both are they same, ye think? Seein' as his business could be our business given wot the Codger be sayin' was our business, that he became interested in as business."

Barbossa snorted. "Whatever it is, I just don't appreciate surprises."

"And that's because yer getting long in the tooth, Hector, an' ye really should be thinkin' o' retirement, maybe someone secluded, remote an' far away from the Caribbees, with no more thought whatsoever o' mutineerin' or stealin' ships."

The older pirate sneered. "An' don't tell me ye be trustin' yer da t'extend all this aid without payment, aye? Thought o' that yet, or d'ye need this old pirate t'do more o' yer thinkin' fer ye? Yer da's a pirate through an' through, an' pirates don't do things fer free. 'Tis probably even in the Code. So why don't ye be runnin' along now, _Cap'n_ Sparrow, an' keep yer ear on the ground?"

"Ye just want me t'get shot," Jack muttered a little mournfully, but he had to admit (again!) that Barbossa had a point. But at least he had confirmed why Barbossa wanted to get to Aqua de Vida; the old pirate was indeed beginning to feel more clearly the call of mortality. Knowing reasons was important to Jack's talent at misdirection, after all.

Still, approaching a sober Captain Teague was by itself a harrowing experience. Jack slunk warily up to the bridge, where even the normal crewmen of the _Octavius_ were allowing Teague a large berth.

Teague didn't even glance at him, when he approached. "There's curiosity and there's curiosity, boy."

"Ye mean there's curiosity o' the sort where the knowin' o' which don't cause serious bodily damage, an' the curiosity o' the sort where the knowin' o' which does?"

"Glad you understand."

"So which o' the sort o' curiosity would this be?"

"Knowing about where I'm goin' after I drop you off?" Jack didn't see Teague move, but a pistol was abruptly cocked and pointing in his direction, even though Teague was still looking out over the glass-calm sea. "I'm thinkin' it would be the former."

"'Scuse me?" Jack stared down the barrel with an itch in the back of his brain that told him he _himself_ wasn't quite drunk enough for this. "Won't cause me serious bodily damage, ye say?"

Teague smirked, uncocked, and holstered the pistol, all in one smooth motion. "Aye, that be so. You don't need to know, boy. Doesn't concern you."

"But it has t'do with how we let Calypso out, aye?" Jack grinned, when Teague finally turned to look at him suspiciously, and swayed back, pointing a finger waveringly in Barbossa's general direction. "Ye don't like the Underside, far as I know, and if yer goin' down here sober, means the business be o' some exceedin' importance, the like o' which ye don't want us t'know 'cos ye don't want t'involve us, aye? An' since Calypso be the only interestin' thing wot happened lately, Above, yer big hurry t'get Underside has t'do with her."

"That's a very interesting and self centered chain of logic," Teague said, somewhat irritably. "And sadly, mostly true. As much as I do not get along particularly well with most of the rest of the First Court, they have to be told. The fact that the sea here is no different means she is still biding her time on the Above. And Calypso is known to be rather… creative, in terms of vengeance."

Jack recalled squid-headed Captains, and grimaced. "So what would ye be doin'? Bind her again?"

"Impossible, since Davy Jones is dead," Teague pointed out. "So we'll be looking for some other solution. That's why I doubt I can help you with a return trip."

"Then it's true that the First Court still be about." Jack digested this information thoughtfully. He had known his father to be part of the First Court, but had rather thought that, given a pirate's average lifespan, most of the rest of the Court had passed on their pieces of eight by the general method of succession by death. Still, he supposed it was entirely possible that the other members had simply given their successors or offspring the pieces, as Teague had.

"In a sense," Teague shrugged. "Most of us are 'about', as you say, but trapped Underside. See, when we asked for immortality, Calypso also cursed us with an inability to pass beyond the Underside to the realm beyond. So those of us who did 'die' in the world Above merely found themselves waking up on the Underside. Forever."

"There's ways t'return. Ye did."

"Aye, just the time be the problem," Teague sniffed at the air, then adjusted course. "I came back, in time to see your ma die of old age. Don't think immortality a blessing, boy. See, outside of the fact that you're bound to watch those you treasure die off one by one, when you've seen it all, done it all, what else is there to do for eternity?"

Jack hadn't quite thought of it that way. "An eternity t'sail the sea, seems pretty good."

"I thought the same too, up 'till I met your ma," Teague said quietly. "You'll be surprised how much your mind can change, when that sort of thing happens."

"Ain't met nobody yet wot could hold my fancy."

"Doesn't mean you never will, and the longer you live, the higher your chances. Take it from an old man who should have died a long time ago, boy. After you fetch the Pearl, go back Above. Maybe you haven't done anything yet that would make eternity with yourself unbearable, but in our vocation, that's only a matter of time."

-tbc-


	5. Personal Nightmares

[A/N: Read amusing article where it seems several writers have a favorite font. Myself, I can only write in Verdana. At the moment I'm thinking about proceeding on the Neverwhere theme of alternative places, having already written a 'real world' adventure story in Fathoms.

String Theory

5

Personal Nightmares

The very first thing Jack did upon scrambling over the gangplank to the _Dutchman_ was to draw his pistol and fire. Will stumbled back with a startled yelp as the shot punched through his left shoulder, then he glared at Jack as the wound automatically started to close. "What was _that _for?"

"I think ye know," Jack flailed the pistol at Will in emphasis, bellowing at the tip, then re-holstering it in his sash. "What did ye have t'call me girl down here?"

"Jack," Bootstrap started down from the helm, his voice placatory, "He didn't know any better."

"Aye, he didn't know any better!" Jack waggled a finger at Will, stalking close and prodding him in the chest. "An' ye know, if ye have power, an' ye do things the result of which ye will not know any better, sooner or later ye'll be havin' results, such as bein' shot in the shoulder, due to the results that ye didn't know better about!"

Will's eyes were slightly glazed, the normal reaction to any of Jack's convoluted sentences. Then he grinned, unfazed. "Nice to see you too, Jack."

Jack growled. "Don't ye think fer a moment that just because I can't kill you means I won't be makin' life extremely uncomfortable fer ye until I have me girl back safe an' sound. Call her back!"

"I tried," Will said honestly, having done so out of guilt shortly after sending the Pearl out to the Locker. "She wouldn't come. You see, we sent her to get-"

"I don't care which poor sod ye sent her t'help," Jack snapped, prodding Will again for emphasis, and ignoring how Teague and Barbossa were boarding the ship and looking at the wandering ghosts with curiosity. "I want ye t'get her back now!"

"I don't think I've ever seen you this upset," Will said dryly, stepping away and heading to the helm, "Not even when you were being chased by the giant squid. Look, Jack," he added, when Jack grabbed his elbow, "I can't do anything to help you. For what it's worth, I'm really sorry, it was an honest mistake, and I didn't think you'll be this upset, and Bootstrap said that she had lots of experience in this sort of guiding thing anyway, all right?"

Jack glared at Bootstrap, who grinned a little nervously and sidled over to speak to Barbossa. Teague ambled forward through the ghosts, however. "There's something you can do, Captain Turner. You could always send the boy after her."

Will blinked at Teague, then turned to stare at Jack, no doubt noticing the many similarities in mannerisms and clothing, and mouthed 'boy?' to Jack, who rolled his eyes and nodded impatiently. Will grinned again. "And you have the advantage of me, sir…?"

"Captain Teague, lad." Teague touched the tip of his hat briefly. "Your ship's a sight better than what it used to look like. My compliments."

"Thanks," Will patted the helm. "I'm growing quite fond of her. But yes, Jack, I could always send you after her. Back to the Locker."

Jack shuddered, unable to suppress it, feeling cold fear curl up the base of his spine. "The Locker, ye say."

"Coyote is hunting her," Teague was staring thoughtfully at Will. "Did you know that, lad?"

"Who's Coyote?" Will inquired, a little too innocently.

In a flash, Jack had slammed Will up against the wheel, despite being of a smaller, slighter build, his lip curled back. "Yer a poor liar, William Turner. Who's Coyote, an' what does he have t'do with me girl, an' what the hell are ye doin' associated with him?"

"Jack…" Will gasped, "Calm down, Jack."

"Start answerin' an' maybe I will."

"Look, I swear to God this is true, all right? A day after I sent the Pearl to the Locker, this dog-headed man calling himself Kojote appeared on the ship. He just wanted to greet the new Captain of the _Flying Dutchman_."

"I very much doubt that'll be only the case," Teague said mildly, though the pirate abruptly seemed far more menacing. "Is it now, lad?"

"No, and he wanted to sell me a proposition that he did to my predecessor," Will said warily, rearranging his collar as Jack let go of him. "He wanted me to work for him, that's all, instead of for Calypso. I don't know who Kojote is, even. He said he was just a storytale. If you're really interested, I refused. If Calypso reverses the enchantment, given that my heart isn't exactly here, I'll probably just end up dying."

"Sometimes storytales be on the same par as Gods," Teague nodded. "There's no such thing as being _just_ one, especially a storytale as powerful as Coyote." When Will and Jack blinked at him, Teague added, a little irritably, "Ain't neither of you been to the New World?"

"Um, no sir," Will said, with a sidelong glance at Jack.

"Been about here an' there. Why?"

"Didn't talk to the natives?"

"Don't tend to get along very well with natives. Though a couple o' tribes of them did attempt to make me their chief."

"Many of their most widespread legends contain the original trickster, Coyote. Sometimes he is portrayed as a wise man; sometimes simply elemental mischief." Teague absently twisted his skull ring. "I'm surprised she never spoke to you about that, Jack."

"An' yer sayin'," Jack ignored the jibe, "That the storytales of a few thousand natives be makin' trouble for us, Underside."

"Magic has far more currency Underside, and belief is a kind of magic. Besides, I've heard that Coyote has been successfully gathering power to himself in some way, outside of the storytales." Teague shrugged. "I didn't concern myself very much with him. He may be the current lord of Florida-Below, but I tend to keep to other places when I'm on business."

"And why would he be huntin' me girl?"

"Coyote is the original trickster, and Raven – the Pearl – is the original spirit guide," Teague began to tug thoughtfully at one of his dreadlocks, his fingers seemingly nervous as he dredged his memory. "That's all I know about the matter. Perhaps they have bad blood between them. She did seem like she was in a hurry to return Above, the last time I was Underside with her. How many days has it been, Captain Turner?"

"Since I sent her? A week, maybe a week and a half?"

"Then she certainly should have been out by now." Teague murmured, then straightened and waved absently at the both of them. "Well! I'll be on my way. Business calls."

"But if she be in danger-"

"I'm not her Captain," Teague grinned, lopsided and merciless. "Ain't my responsibility, boy, but send her my regards when you do see her. I'll be taking my leave. Captain Turner, pleasure to meet you, though I suggest you associate with more salubrious company in the future. Hector." Teague nodded at Barbossa on his unhurried way back over the gangplank to the _Octavius_, who inclined his head in return, motioning for the rest of Jack's crew to board the _Dutchman_.

"So what ye be doin', Jack?" Barbossa inquired from the foot of the bridge, once the _Octavius_ was well on its way. Being pirates, no doubt he and Bootstrap had been in listening distance all along. Bootstrap's glance at Will was a little accusing: it seems he had been left out of certain transactions, perhaps. Jack, however, found he could muster very little effort to care at this point, agitated over the possible danger to the Pearl.

He took a deep breath, telling himself sharply that fear was really irrational at this point (though he was indeed an irrational pirate, and an irrational fear probably became a rational fear, didn't it?), that the Pearl likely needed him, that whatever it was in the Locker wouldn't be _his_ fear, but some poor sod's. Still, he _had_ once chosen his own skin over her survival, but at that time he had truly felt he had no hope of driving back the Kraken, in any case. Here, he might actually be able to be of some material aid, and the thought of losing the Pearl forever made his stomach sour. _Doing things he might regret…_

"Will. Can ye tell if she's still… in there?"

Will nodded. "I'll know if she's not."

"Send me, then." Jack grudgingly slipped his hand forward.

"It's very brave of you, Jack," Will said soberly.

Jack scowled. This had all been _Will's_ fault in the first place, and he certainly needed no reminders that the Locker was indeed a horrific enough place to warrant a 'it's very brave of you' compliment to those who would chance it. "Well, fuck ye an' send me before I shoot ye again, whelp."

--

James is somewhat annoyed to realize that he was back in the dirty version of his Commodore's captain coat, complete with battered baldric, worn shirt and matted hair, and a week's worth of a beard. Also, he could smell himself again, unwashed grime and the sour stench of several days worth of alcohol. Furthermore, his injuries hadn't disappeared, and agony flared with every step. "Is this really necessary?"

"Your memories, sweetheart," Pearl said, though she was standing noticeably a little further away from him, as they ambled down one of the dirt streets of the free port, sidestepping the occasional pail of dirty water poured out of balconies, the brawls that spilled out into the street, and merchants attempting to get their wares to inns before ending up as one part of an equation of random violence. "Surprisingly clear, if I say so myself, despite being drunk for most of it."

"An officer has to be able to observe details," James points out wryly.

"And have very strong convictions about his men, it seems." At James' frown, Pearl reaches to the side and pats him on the cleanest part of his sleeve that she could find. "You see, James, the people in the memories brought up by the Locker are shaped by your perception of them. I very much doubt that in a real situation of monsters attacking your marines that they would have fought so bravely."

"They did, fighting the undead pirates aboard my _Dauntless_," James argues.

"True," Pearl admits. "But then you are a remarkable human."

"Thanks," James says dryly. Said that way, it emphasized the essentially inhuman nature of his companion, as pretty as she looked as a girl. He sidestepped a donkey cart laden with barrels, as he added, "So, uh, after you help me, you'll start on another case?"

"I hope not," Pearl says, giving a trio of brawling pirates a respectable berth, "I'll probably be heading back Above. The 'true' world," she explains, when James looks puzzled. "My love is there."

"Ah, I see," James nods. As they walk into the town square, ignoring the increasingly drunken carousing of the pirate folk, he inquires, "What or who are we looking for here?"

"Information," Pearl tugs James by the elbow into a particularly revolting alley, carefully sidestepping piles of steaming rubbish.

"And that's in dream-Tortuga."

"Do you know you ask an annoying number of questions? And yes, she nests in Tortuga: all the Tortugas. I am not sure why. Perhaps she likes the conference points." Pearl stops at the dead end, and knocks on the wall, speaking a word in a whispering tongue that James could not catch. He blinks. The wall is now a black square, which Pearl drags him into.

James finds himself in an extremely cluttered, tiny room, filled with shelves of books and strange artifacts: here a stuffed lizard, there a tiny, cracked skull of a child, hanging precariously over a stack of yellowing parchment; a tattered cloak edged with gorgeous gold thread weave, rumpled next to his feet at the foot of a cracked globe sent in bronze; a series of scintillating glass beads, scattered across the ground and filling a fine porcelain pot; feathers and tomes and empty bottles and broken furniture and rusted weapons and splintered arrows. James takes a breath, his senses briefly overloaded, and tries to focus on the small table set directly before them, also loaded with all manner of junk, and the strange basket before that. The sole light from the room comes from two partially shuttered lanterns, hung from iron chains from the apex of the domed ceiling.

What he had rather thought to be a rather large white rodent uncurls into a small elderly lady with extremely thick, gold-framed glasses, her skin scrunched in creases, her eyes tiny and black against her pale face. Her fingers have very long, yellowed nails, under the heavy, white furred hooded cloak that she wore, and she smells strongly of the earth after the rain. "Raven," she speaks, and her voice is high-pitched and soft, quavering in the silence of the room. "What brings you here, you and the Lost One?"

"A lost one no longer, Grandmother," Pearl indicates James' injuries with a gesture. "I am in need of aid for his injuries, and I have some questions."

"What have you to trade?" the old lady's eyes narrow greedily.

"A feather," Pearl draws her hand over her cheek, and with a twist of her hand holds a perfect black feather, which she hands to Grandmother. The old woman chitters quietly to herself in a strange tongue as she snatches it from Pearl, and places it carefully on a shelf behind her.

"There is rootberry salve to your right, Humanchild," Grandmother gestures with one long fingernail. "Clear a place to sit and apply it to your wounds, while I have words with your guide."

James selects the earthenware pot under the old woman's directions, and manages to push a stack of ceramic figurines behind a set of heavy mahogany walking-sticks. He smells the pot a little dubiously: ginger and cinnamon, oddly not too unpleasant. Pearl nods and smiles encouragingly at him before turning her attention back to Grandmother. James wonders if it is an effect of being rather dead that makes him accept transforming pirates, strange cluttered rooms behind dead-ends and odd witch-like old women in his stride. The first application of salve on his unwrapped leg stings, but the wounds start to close quickly. More magic. He supposed he really _was_ inured to surprises, now.

"The way out is tangled, Grandmother Mole," Pearl says earnestly. "And I think Coyote's hand is at the bottom of all this."

Grandmother's eyes narrow further into slits, and she spits. "Coyote! Coyote! A plague of fleas on his fur. But aye, he is too powerful now for any of the remaining First Children to face, even together, and so we must hide."

"And he is hunting me," Pearl adds, almost offhandedly.

Grandmother screeches, so suddenly that James nearly drops the pot. "He? Hunting you? With what?"

"The Anada'dvtaski."

"Them! Them!" Grandmother's screech becomes even more uncomfortably high pitched. "Leave! Leave now! Before they scent you to me!"

"Information, Grandmother," Pearl says, her smile catlike now. "And you'll best not be speaking in your riddles, if you want us to leave quickly. I wounded Anada'ti, but I think he will be back after he licks his wounds."

"Speak then, speak quickly!"

"You can see way from the beginning to the end of everything, Grandmother. What is the way out of this tangle?"

"Aid comes, sent by the ferryman. He has the key out," Grandmother wrings her hands agitatedly. "Seek him in the _Black Gull_ tavern. The beginning of this tale is this Humanchild's death. The end of this tale is the Aqua de Vida. The way from the beginning to the end is the stormy petrel. I cannot see the beginning or the end of Coyote's motives, for he has woven spellwork against us all. Leave! Leave!"

"The Aqua de Vida?" Pearl blinks. "A tall order, for it is within Coyote's territory."

"I see the beginning and the end and the way, not why or how or when," Grandmother makes agitated shooing gestures with clawed hands. "Leave! Leave!"

"There's no real need for you to be this worried, Grandmother," Pearl smiles wickedly. "You can always use that feather to buy my wards of invisibility over your home, you know, instead of hoarding that little chip of my soul that you'll be unlikely to be able to trade or use. It's possible that even if we leave now, they may come looking for you."

Grandmother stares at Pearl for a long, shocked moment, then bares yellowing teeth, the front pair long and thick, like a rodent's, when James begins to laugh. "Oh, oh, you conniving creature!"

--

"Tortuga?" Jack frowned as he ducked a thrown bottle out of habit. "Which poor sod's worst nightmare is Tortuga?"

Still, he supposed this was a fairly good turn of luck, and at his favorite tavern, at that. He carefully took a bottle of rum from the counter, seeing that the management was rather set on preventing a couple of increasingly drunken pirates from drinking from the tapped keg, with the persuasive device of a very large club, and sauntered through the crowd. "Don't mind me. Passin' through."

Now, the Pearl really should be around here somewhere. Jack took a swallow of the rum, and pulled a face. That was strange: the rum tasted incredibly foul. He peered up at the cracked, winding balustrade and its carvings that went to the second floor. No, this was certainly the _Black Gull_, which _had_ very fine rum. Did. Was supposed to.

He sniffed the bottle, pausing next to a table of pirates becoming more and more rowdy with their paid-for mistresses. Smelled like rum. Tasted… definitely _not _like rum, more like horsepiss (Jack would decline politely to explain exactly how he would know that to be an adequate comparison). Jack groaned. Perhaps the poor sod's worst nightmare was indeed a world with terrible rum.

That made more sense.

Dropping the bottle as politely as he could on a table, just as a couple of pirates began rolling up against it, throwing wild drunken punches, he took out his compass, staring at it intently, and therefore, could really be forgiven for walking straight into one James bloody Norrington. Who looked just about the same as Jack last remembered him, come to think of it, the traitorous thieving ex-Navy maybe-Navy monkey bugger: far too tall, unshaven, filthy and dressed in a tattered version of his Commodore's clothes.

Jack yelped, darting back, his body instinctively remembering that pirate-James tended to have a violent temper, and registered the startled stare with growing shock. "Don't tell me _yer_ the poor sod!"

Norrington knit his brow into a irritable frown, his usual reaction to just about anything Jack said, but at that point, his Pearl stepped out from behind him, and let out a girlish squeal of delight. "Jack!"

Jack found the air in his lungs squeezed out as his girl hugged him tightly, purring and rubbing her cheek against his shoulder, and he chuckled breathlessly and in relief, as he curled an arm around her waist and petted the perfect braids of hair. Behind her, Norrington looked even more confused, then the man blinked, slowly. "Pearl. When you said your name was Pearl, you meant you _are_ the… _Black Pearl_?"

"You can hear her?" Jack demanded, a little jealously, just as Pearl turned and stuck her tongue out at Norrington. "Talk? Not speak in your mind?"

"I've decided that I like him," the Pearl informed Jack with a pretty, beseeching grin, as Norrington nodded warily, and his heart began to sink. "Can we keep him?"

"No pets allowed on deck, missy, Cotton's parrot otherwise," Jack glowered at Norrington. It seemed he was certainly just in time. He had never known anyone outside of Captain Teague who could 'hear' the Pearl actually speak: she spoke words to Barbossa only within the old pirate's mind, Cotton included. Charming his girl away from him, indeed! "And he's _Navy_. _And_ you never seemed to like him the last time. _And_ he's markedly troublesome, he is!"

"That's before I got to know him better," Pearl said playfully, and Norrington smirked when Jack narrowed his eyes at him.

"Jealous, Sparrow?"

"You…" Jack shook a finger angrily at the damnably smug cad, "You… you still stink!"

"I see what she meant by a key," Pearl murmured, ignoring Jack and twisting in his arms to look at the compass that he still held in the hand about her back. "Jack, think of rum, the closest rum to here. Good rum, not the dream-sort."

Norrington shook his head slowly, as though coming to a conclusion shared by the Pearl but which eluded Jack. "_Please_ don't tell me we're just about to be saved by a mad pirate's love of rum."

"I need a true line to something outside the Locker, and this would suffice," the Pearl retorted. "Come on, Jack."

Norrington let out a long-suffering sigh.

--

Anada'ti hisses as he scents the dream-world. The scent-trail breaks in an alley, and the prey seem to double back to a shelter. They are no longer in the dream-world, but he can scent their pathway out.

The remainder of his pack grovels on the dirt street, moaning in distress, as Anada'ti prowls angrily before them, holding his arm just above the severed joint. Coyote had told him strictly to return if he failed, but the scent was true, and he could follow. And perhaps out of the dream-world Raven's fireblades would not work. The Anada'dvtaski would hunt, and then he would return.

Sensing that their leader had come to a decision, the pack looks up as one, and Anada'ti snarls again, slamming at the dirt ground with his fist as the dream-world begins to crinkle around them at the edges, like crumpling paper. "We hunt. We hunt. We kill the Raven. Follow! Follow!"

-tbc-


	6. Particularly Good

[A/N: Had an incredibly busy week.

String Theory

6

Particularly Good

"We're still in Tortuga," Norrington said, rather unnecessarily, as the world refocused back into the _Black Gull_.

"O' course we are. Where'd ye think the good rum was?" Jack stared as a lady of the night brushed past him with a coy smile. She had one more pair of limbs than was really normal, adorned with gorgeous mother-of-pearl bangles. Norrington let out a soft gasp of astonishment. Quietly, Jack hissed, "Missy, we're in the _wrong_ Tortuga!"

"No, the right one," the Black Pearl inclined her head when a scruffy buccaneer from the table immediately behind Jack waved at her. Via peripheral vision, Jack could tell that while the buccaneer in question looked human, the rest of the men drinking with him were very obviously not. Scales, feathers and fur had as much representation in the complement of customers as human hair and skin, and rather disconcertingly, nobody was brawling, only sitting peaceably in groups and chatting in various languages, some of which he did not recognize.

If this was a hallucination, it was a particularly good one.

Jack was staring unabashedly at pair of female lions seated in an alcove and lapping rum from a bowl when the Pearl caught him by the arm and dragged him through the press of bodies towards the bar, motioning for Norrington to follow. The pirate-tavern fragrance of gunpowder, sweat, rum, whisky and tobacco here also underlined with warm animal scent.

The bartender was (or looked) human. He was a tall, thin man with a rather long neck and small black eyes. His black hair was combed neatly against his skull, and his smile was concise, thin, as he spotted the Pearl approach him. "Raven." His gaze turned to Jack and Norrington, and his smile disappeared, his high brow furrowing. His speech was fussily British and carefully enunciated, terribly out of place with his open shirt and patchy gray breeches, polishing a tankard. "You do know I have certain standards, about here? Several of my guests are sensitive."

The Pearl spoke quickly before Jack could make any comment about _that_ insulting remark. Standards, indeed! "We've just come out of the Locker, Cormie."

Cormie's frown smoothened out. "I see. In that case, I have washing facilities at the back, and my daughters will fix up your clothing while you are cleaning up, gentlemen."

"Cleaning up…!" Jack got only that far before the Pearl stepped back heavily and neatly on his toe, causing him to drown the rest of his words in a yelp of pain.

She smiled reassuringly at Cormie, who had raised an eyebrow. "Thank you very much, Cormie. I'll have to talk to you about certain matters. One moment, please." The Pearl dragged Jack to a side. "Jack. I really need to speak with Cormie, and I don't think I can trust you to wander around outside Tortuga-Below without getting into trouble, even if James accompanies you."

Jack pouted, and turned to glare at Norrington, who had followed them: the man was chuckling. "That man's far more troublesome than me, luv. An' I don't know 'bout this bathin' business, in the middle o' the World Between, Lords know what ye'll catch, all this dirt is protective, missy, an' look, I can swear by…"

"Swear all you like, even if you were to just sit quietly in the street trouble would find you," the Pearl said mercilessly, then her eyes softened and she clasped Jack's wrists in both hands, her expression puppyishly beseeching. "Jack, _please_. For me?"

Jack groaned. "Now that's just unfair an' ye know it."

"It's just a bath, Sparrow." Norrington said dryly. "God knows the both of us need one."

"Now see here," Jack whirled, stalking close and shaking a finger under Norrington's nose, "Washin' could remove all manner o' protective layers that would then cause me t'catch all manner o' diseases o' what have ye on account o' me not havin' anymore layers due to the aforementioned forced bathin'!"

"I can assure you that bathing is not detrimental to your health," Norrington was fighting a smirk, and failing miserably. "Considering where we just escaped from, a bath is a fairly trivial issue to be upset over, isn't it?"

Jack was about to retort further, when the Pearl hugged him tightly from the side. "Thank you, Jack!" She turned to Norrington, mouthing theatrically, 'Make sure he doesn't run off by himself', waved, and walked back to Cormie, who gestured at one of the _Gull's _silent, thin waitresses to lead them away.

--

Norrington rolled his eyes when Jack stared dubiously at the pails of hot water lined up against the wall. There was a low wooden bench, over the warm flagstones, and a tray containing several bars of plain white soap, sponges and a couple of shaving razors. A dour-faced, rake-thin, middle-aged woman, despite their protests, had divested them of their gear in exchange for yellowing white bathrobes and soft slippers. Above the pails was a rectangular mirror, unadorned and frosted by steam from the hot water. Floating in two of the pails were smaller buckets, to scoop.

The pirate scowled when Norrington wasted no time in removing the robe and folding it in a dry corner of the room, placing the slippers on top of it. He didn't doubt that the ingrained ponce in the other man that made him think it absolutely normal and manly to wear wigs and tights also made him far too fond of bathing. Though he had to admit that the man had a very _pert_ arse. Not to mention that he didn't seem to be wearing any amount of fat at all, despite being a higher-up Navy toff: from what Jack could see, the man was simply toned muscle, marred now and then by white scars.

Norrington peered at him from the mirror and arched an eyebrow irritably when he realized Jack was staring. He had already seated himself on a far corner of the bench, and was engaged in dowsing himself in hot water. "What?"

Jack managed to force his jaw to work. "Nothin'." He smirked, to recover some of his usual sang-froid. "Yer as pale as a sheltered flower o' English womanhood again, Commodore. Or was it Admiral? Ye never said."

"I never thought you one for titles, Sparrow," Norrington ignored the question. The other man's pale skin was flushing a pretty rosy pink from the hot water and the steam, as he tried to rinse the dirt out of his hair. "Now if it's too much of an affront to your personal dignity to soap, at least rinse."

The pirate pinched his nose. As much as he was fairly free with either side of the fence, in terms of sexuality, Jack knew there were further priorities overriding the entertainment that could be had in copping looks (or perhaps 'accidental' feels) of an ex-Commodore who was cleaning up surprisingly well. Without the bitterness, the cold air of forbidding superiority, silly wig and poncy clothes, Norrington was a surprisingly handsome man, when not trying to hang/quarter/stab/double-cross him.

For example, his finely tuned sense of survival had picked up the tension of their female escort, not to mention how he knew from personal experience how heavy frocks and petticoats could hide all manner of nefarious weaponry. He could also pick out soft breathing from behind the door, and the occasional faint, sharp clack of metal on flagstones, as a guard leaned the point of their blade on the ground.

Still, for all he knew they could merely be wary of himself and the ex-Commodore as potential thieves, but it never hurt in his particular vocation to be careful. Jack sidled around the bench to the single window open and set high into the wall, and peered up at it. He could get through easily for sure, with his slighter build, but Norrington would have to squeeze. Also, it was rather higher than what he could reach if he jumped…

Also, it would likely be very suspicious if the both of them were quiet. Talking while thinking about something absolutely different was one of Jack's specialties, however. "Did Pearl fill ye in on what happened after ye scarpered off back t'Beckett?"

Norrington spared him a cool stare, even as he began soaping his hair. "No. We were rather occupied." He paused, then added, somewhat hesitantly, "Whatever happened, though, after my… my death? Beckett was going to meet all of you with the Armada, at Shipwreck Cove. Are you dead, too? Is that why you're here?"

"Sorry t'disappoint, luv," Jack flashed Norrington a cheeky grin as he picked up the now-empty first bucket and carried it as noiselessly as he could to the window. "I came down here over me girl, through other means. Beckett is dead, Davy Jones is dead, yer Armada seems t'have returned to bonny England."

"Dead?" Norrington sounded incredulous, and Gods, did those green eyes look amazingly pretty up close when widened in disbelief. "How?"

"Sea turtles." Jack upturned the bucket carefully under the window, and got onto it as noiselessly as he could. He could reach the edge now. Good. He turned back to notice Norrington frowning at him. Before the man could give away what he was doing, Jack quickly put a finger to his lips, pointed at the door, then drew the finger across his throat.

Norrington narrowed his eyes, but played along. Smart man. "You spout all sorts of nonsense."

In any case, from this position he had a fantastic view of the other man's frontal regions, which showed that a preference for wigs or tights otherwise, Norrington was certainly amply endowed. Jack restrained the urge to salivate figuratively and kicked his brain back into the problem at hand. He carefully gripped the edge of the window, kicked off the slippers and hauled himself up, while walking his feet up the brick wall. Thankfully, they were only a couple of storeys up, and the drop was into an alley. Escape was entirely feasible, even though they would stick out like a sore thumb on the streets, running about nearly naked. Hmm.

"I'm not pullin' yer leg, man," Jack continued talking, as he looked down back into the room. "Everythin' ended up happily, through ways ye probably wouldn't believe me even if I told ye, aye?"

"How did Beckett die?"

"Shot up by me _Pearl _and the _Dutchman_."

"That's not possible," Norrington scoffed, "The _Endeavor_ is a ship of the line. There is no feasible way two galleons could have faced it down, even the _Pearl_ and the _Dutchman_. I suppose that is how Davy Jones perished, betraying Beckett?"

"Under yer command, maybe. Beckett be only a businessman, he has no idea 'bout real command. Also, wot happened t'the Dutchman be a long story that don't bear repeatin' here."

The other alternative was to actually force their way out, but Jack tended to prefer to avoid confrontations with armed people where he himself was unarmed whenever possible.

Or, they could simply assume everybody's best intentions, though in Jack's experience people tended not to guard doors with bared blades unless they intended to do nefarious and lethal things to his person.

Right.

He had: one somewhat confused ex-Commodore, five pails of hot water, two small pails, two empty pails, a door that opened outward, and a bench.

Put that way, it would be too easy.

The World Below scented stronger than the dream-world, and here, the severed stump of his hand seemed to burn with agony. Anada'ti shook his head, hissing to himself, as he loped down the corridors of the Humanchild building, sniffing and snorting. He could sense the Raven. He could sense the Lost Ones. Kill her first, then the Lost.

His Pack had refused to come. Refused! But the air of the World Below was acid to their kind, and the pain from each breath of air sucked into his abused lungs was becoming maddening. The curse of the First Children that had banished them from any sight of the sun had weakened considerably under Coyote's influence, but it was still there.

He would kill her, then return to the colder peace of the Realms Beyond, to rest. Kill her, kill the Lost.

--

"So what brings you to Tortuga, Raven?" Cormie asked, as he ushered the Pearl into his private study, in the backrooms of the inn. The room was elegant, in rich tones of mahogany and red velvet upholstery, with a glass case of books and a gorgeous antique writing desk with neatly stacked papers. Behind the desk was a large oil painting of a cormorant, perched on a cliff ledge, wings outstretched, a silvery fish in its beak.

"Passing through," the Pearl said, sitting down in one of the two plush chairs before the desk, as Cormie sat behind it. "I ran into a little bit of trouble in the Locker, and had to get out any way I could. Have you seen Teague about?"

"That old pirate? Can't say I have, though I heard that he's back Underside." Cormie grinned slyly. "Be that because of you, Raven? Heard the Immortal's been sweet on you since you helped him out of the Locker."

"I wouldn't know," the Pearl said innocently, though that was good news indeed. If Teague was Underside, she had far more allies than she had thought. "Didn't hear any rumors about why he's back Underside?"

"Heard he visited that small fishing village… whatever the name is… full of those small brownish people…"

"Temasek?"

"Singapore-Below, aye," Cormie nodded sagely. "So maybe he's just visiting old friends."

"Unlikely. Teague never got on very well with many of the First Court, let alone Anmar." That sounded less encouraging. If Teague was truly visiting the First Court, then there had to be momentous business indeed, and the man would be too busy to be of much aid. Still, she supposed that she could simply just return to the Surface, but both her favorites, Jack and Hector, seemed hell-bent on the Aqua de Vida. And there was what Grandmother Mole had said. "Do you know what happened to Petrel?"

"Caught by Coyote centuries ago. You knew that."

"Just wondering," the Pearl murmured. "No notice that he's been free?"

"No, he and I were always good friends. If he had freed himself, he would have come to me. Why?" Cormie cocked his head at her, reminiscent of his true form.

"Something that Grandmother Mole said to me in the Locker," the Pearl hesitated a moment before telling Cormie. He was an old friend, but too much time associating with the pirates on this side of the sunset had rubbed off. "She mentioned something about the stormy petrel."

"The 'stormy petrel' is also a Humanchild figure of speech, Raven. I'm surprised you didn't know." Cormie had always prided himself on his knowledge of the Other Children. "It means the herald of poor tidings."

"Well, that's amazingly unhelpful," the Pearl muttered.

"Why, what is? And what else did Grandmother Mole say?"

"Nothing I feel I should share until I find out more about it," the Pearl shrugged. "Well. Thank you then, Cormie. I'll have a drink at the bar with you while waiting for my friends."

"For old times," Cormie agreed, then pulled a pistol out from his drawer, pointing it at the Pearl. "But times long past."

"Cormie!" the Pearl was stunned.

"I think Coyote will be very interested in whatever Grandmother Mole may have told you, my dear. If you cooperate, this doesn't even have to be uncomfortable."

"I don't _believe_ you, Cormorant," the Pearl exploded heatedly, "You _hate_ Coyote! He captured Heron and Kingfisher! Your best friends! Hell's blood, _you_ were the one who hid me and helped me to get to the other side of the sunset, when he first started hunting me! I've always trusted you!"

"It's all about survival in the end, Raven," Cormie's smile was a little sad, though his eyes were cold. "I am one of the few First Children blessed with trueborn descendants. On a scale of interests, theirs outweigh yours. Now, what did Grandmother Mole say to you?"

The Pearl was lining up the filthiest invective she could remember from her best-beloved, when the door splintered and Anada'ti forced his way through, hissing, the severed stump of his hand flailing, the other gouging long troughs in the side of a bookshelf, slavering in brutish, bloodthirsty excitement. "_Raven! Raven!_"

The Pearl hurriedly dived to a corner of the study as Anada'ti lunged. The spindly, but large creature barreled into the table, forcing the edge into Cormie's stomach. The traitorous creature yelped in surprise, stumbling back: the gun in his hands went off with a deafening bang in the enclosed room, the bullet burying itself in the plaster ceiling. The Pearl took this as her cue to start running for the door…

--

Cormorant's eldest and second daughter frowned at each other outside the door to the baths, as the two Other Children began to shout at each other. Humanchildren were a noisy lot, however, and they ignored it.

"Yer _not_ getting' me anywhere near all that fuckin' soap!"

"Sparrow. Getting a little cleaner wouldn't hurt."

There was a splash, and a shriek from the smaller one. "Ye… ye _scurvy bilge-rat_!"

"Much better." The taller one with the deeper voice sounded smug.

"I'm going t'kill ye fer that!"

The daughters looked worried. Their father had left specific instructions that the two Humanchildren were to be alive. If a brawl broke up, they would have to break it up. Quickly, the elder daughter opened the door, only to see the smaller Humanchild sling a pail forcefully at them. She stumbled back, squawking, dropping the blade as she brought up her hands automatically to shield her face from the hot water, knocking herself and her sister sprawling onto the ground.

They looked up to see that both Humanchildren had, with surprising speed, taken both their blades. The small one smirked. "Too easy. Now, ladies, we'll be troublin' ye both fer our clothes."

--

With both of their guards and the other female they had been taken to see in a side-room marched into the bathroom and the bench levered up under the door and the remaining pails of hot water up against it to prevent them from opening it, Jack and Norrington began to dress hurriedly. Their clothes had been patched up surprisingly quickly, washed and dried by what Jack rather thought was likely magic. Norrington's coat was even starched, as he put it on and sheathed the stolen blade at his hip. Jack felt nebulously disappointed, as Norrington even buttoned up his shirt before pulling on the washed baldric, and had to kick himself mentally again. Concentrate. Pearl probably in danger. People with the best of intentions didn't usually enter a bathhouse with drawn blades, whatever the context.

Norrington reached that conclusion at the same time as he did. "We have to find Pearl… the Black Pearl," he amended, but Jack merely nodded tightly as he buckled belts over his sash. "Where to start? I doubt we can look through all the rooms for her."

Just at that moment, there was an almighty crash and the sound of wood splintering, somewhere above them, and a roar of hatred, pain and hunger. Norrington flinched, and darted out of the door, starting to run.

"Hey… hey!" Jack followed quickly in his flailing gate. "Where're ye goin'?"

"That's the sound of one of the monsters in the Locker," Norrington replied tensely over his shoulder, as the ran towards the stairway at the end of the corridor they were in. "She might be in danger!"

At the stairway, the Pearl herself rather ruined the dramatic-rescuer moment by barreling into Norrington with a squeak, making him stagger backwards into Jack, catching himself quickly on the edge of the balustrade before they all went sprawling. She grinned with joyous relief when she realized who she had run into. "Had a nice bath, boys?"

"Just in time t'wear out our welcome, I be thinkin'," Jack pointed out dryly, as heavy stomping sounds could be heard on the floor above them.

"This way."

Their boots seemed too loud on the flagstones as they ran through what looked like a neatly stacked storage room lit with shuttered candles, full of wrapped crates and barrels, and out into the taproom. Pearl bodily dragged Jack by the wrist to the thick of the tables, closely followed by Norrington, just in time for Anada'ti to burst out of the door, howling for blood. Shouts and snarls and invectives, as the more sober pirates leaped to their feet: then their less sober compatriots seemed to take this as their cue to begin to throw punches.

At the brawl that ensued, Pearl managed to pull them both safely out of the inn and into the winding maze of alleys identical to Tortuga-Above, which Jack knew by heart. Pearl ceded him the lead, and he slowed only when they were several twists away from the _Gull_. "We'll get t'the harbor an' nick a ship. Sorry, Missy."

The Pearl sniffed. "I suppose we only need a small one. We just need to get to Port Royal."

"What's in Port Royal?" Jack inquired, just as Norrington asked, "Why?"

"Because I have friends there that can hide us for a little, up until we find out where the rest of my crew went to, or what to do next," the Pearl said patiently, as Jack led them unerringly through the alleys, circling occasionally to get away from wider streets.

"Friends," Norrington's tone was dubious.

"With friends like those we just met, Missy, yer better off just makin' enemies."

-tbc-


End file.
